
Glass. 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 






AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 

Edited by 
Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D. 






AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 



Abraham Lincoln 



by 
ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLT7ER, Ph.D. 

Author of "Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier." 
" 1 fie Referendum in America,** etc. 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 



27 1904 

iloo.vrljrht 




. • / 3 



'J2. 



i . ft ■ 



flfcffy 1 



t. 4-5-1 



Copyright, 1904, by 

George W. Jacobs & Company 

Published October, 1904. 



PREFACE 

An apology may be needed for another biography 
sent out to join the multiplying number of written 
and published lives of Abraham Lincoln. To 
many it may have seemed that the last word was 
said long since, and that nothing of value can now 
be added to the record. I am not certain that I 
have justified myself in the present effort to contra- 
dict that no doubt wide-spread belief. I claim for 
these chapters no vast amount of research into 
sources not before used by Lincoln's biographers. 
So thoroughly and well has this labor been per- 
formed by others that nothing of value can be 
hoped for from this exercise. Mcolay and Hay's 
ten volumes of history, supplemented by two vol- 
umes of the Civil War President's letters and 
speeches, leave little to be done in that direction. 
Because of the exhaustiveness of their study and 
the minutiae of the information they have brought 
to light, theirs will always be regarded as the first 
work of reference upon Lincoln. They have given 
us the closest view of his official life— but as private 
secretaries who knew him as young men, as very 
worshipful admirers of him, and as good haters of 
the other side. Herndon is our foremost authority 
for Lincoln's earlier life, especially in Springfield, 



6 PKEFACE 

and if the President is not so attractive a hero in 
the eyes of a neighbor, a law partner, an earlj 
friend, and in a fuller sense, a contemporary than 
either Mr. Nicolay or Mr. Hay. it is do subject for 
great wonder. Other printed works apon Lincoln 
are impressions like my own,— some by contempo 
raries and some by younger men, some l>.\ confessed 
admirers and some by students, who have ftp 
proached their subject in the true spiril of the his 
torian. In spite of a plenitude of biographical 
material, it has seemed to me thai there was lack of 
a readable, compact life of Lincoln bj one who 
never saw him, — born indeed well ftfter his day, — 
by one who knows him only for what he did, and 
who, therefore, may be in the temper to form an 
impression that is unbiased, and it maj be hoped 
also just. I have approached him in do spirit <>f 
worship, and have found much in him that does not 
well conform with my own ideals for humanity. 
These minor defects of character, however, have aot 
prevented me from appreciating tin- u r,, nin^ that 
always burned as a bright flame, and burns still t<> 
illumine the way of the American nation adown the 
centuries. 

The series of volumes, of which this is the first, 
was planned to give an impartial twentieth century 
view of the greatest event in the life of the nation 
in the nineteenth century. The men of the South 
who in 1860 did not share the Hews of the men of 
the North will be estimated by the Southern stand 



PREFACE 7 

ards of this later tinu — by historians of their own 
section and of this generation. These Southern ap- 
preciations of Southern Leaders are admitted freely 
ami will I*.- accepted as jnsl by the editor of the 
series, and I hope, also, by the public into whose 
hands the volumes fall. We of the North bespeak 
the same attention for our volumes in the hands of 
Southern readers. 

My own antecedents are all Northern and my 
sympathies, had I lived in that time, would have 
been with tin- North as against aegro slavery, and 
the strict constructionist ami State Bights view of 
tin- Constitution. These facts, however, cannot 
prevent me from appreciating honesty of motive, 
sincerity of inn]...-;-, political talent and sagacity, 
military valor, ami patience under great suffering 
after the war, on the part of the Southern people. 
Much of what thej did, when the anal estimate is 
given, must make as feel verj proud that we are 
sprung from a common stock, that our destiny was 
the Bame before the great difference arose, ami thai 
it is t<» be "in- henceforward. Thej are a part <>f 
ind we are a part of them, toget her ennobled, 
verj likely, i>\ the trial, as Lincoln was i>\ sore 
distress, for tin- ta->k-> t<> !>•• performed side i>\ side 
in this century. 

That the work of setting the Civil War before the 
present generation of readers needs t«» i>«- done I 
have long flrmlj believed, ami it is qow undertaken 
with a sincere desire t»» execute the plan a-* dis] 
sionately, as authoritatively, and at the same time 



8 PREFACE 

as entertainingly, as the proportions of the task and 
the conditions of book-writing a in I publishing po 
mit. For our failures, if there be these, we bespeak 
the merciful consideration that man owes to man, 
North owes to South, South owes to North, and 
nation owes to other nations. Perfection of jndg 
ment and full agreement in opinion and thought 
we have never had. and can never enjoj except at 
a sacrifice of variety, without which human exist 
ence would soon grow very monotonous for all of 
us. Let it be said, however, when we begin, that 
we are trying to d<> the best the frailties induced bj 
upbringing in our separate Bections will alio* : 
when we have finished i hat we hai e done as well ae 
Northern and Southern men could be expected to 
do in formulating and uttering theii judgm< at 
each other. 



CONTENTS 



chronology .... 
Early Life .... 
Benedick lnd Lawyer 
Hlfl i:\ i by i\ po mi. Avn 8LAVEB 

1 !« T .... 

The Great Debati 

Si »MIN ' \ I li> POB TIN. PBEBJ m.\« ¥ 

VI. I > . po W \>m\«. r«»\ 
VI I. Tin l: r INNING OF i in. \\ \ k 
LAND AND THE South . 

A NX'. 

Tin SLAVE in rm: W \i: 

IJN< I 'I N. THE l'< 'I I TH'I \N 

Lincoln, the Man 
The Endoi phe Wab 

\ VATION 

[OORAPH1 

India 



I 

II. 



[V 
V 



VIM 

IX 

X 

XI 

XII 

XIII 

XIV 



1 1 

L5 

— . » 

L02 
L30 

1 66 

l.su 

295 
318 

• ill 
363 
378 
381 



CHRONOLOGY 



-Thomn* Lincoln and N.m. -y Bankfl married, June 12, in 
Kentucky. 

•Birth <»f Abraham Lincoln, February 13, In Hardin, now 
La Rue County, Ky. 

1818 Removal to Indiana, where the family settled in the 
neighborhood of Gentryville, 

1-1- of Abraham Lincoln'- mother. 

I - - First trip in a ana. 

County, Illi! 

n turning from which 
Abraham lea In behind him and settles 
in ' d on the Bangamon Rii bt, to 

ark m 1 i 

-Announces hu e Illinois Legislature, and 

for the Black Hawk Waj l pon hu return lie is 

defeated for the I i . nturt*, the only defeat he ever euf- 

'i-li.-s the lii ni of 
Bei : j and Lincoln n»" in N tn. 

Appointed po In N Jem. Cloaea the 

later, to mi rej log and read law. 

Elected to the niinoii tnre bj ■ large majority. 

I »• ath of hie i.: \ inn Rutledge. 

l - .'. i 

ttlen m Sj.i ingfield, the oonnty '"•at. to take up flip 
lotioe of Ian wilh Majoi John T. Stuart. 

to the I re, in which he il the WIhk 

1 thi M < •'!-•■ of Repreeentath i 



12 CHKONOLCX i 2 

1840— Reelected to the Legislature, again to be bifl partj '■ can- 
didate for Speaker. "Stumps" the State fee lippe- 

canoe and Tyler Too." 

1841— Forms law partnership with Stephen T. Logan un.ln the 
firm name of Logan and Lincoln. 

1842— Duel with James Shields, and marriage, November I to 
Mary Todd. 

1844 — Heads Illinois' electoral tic-kit for Benrj Clay, the Whig 

candidate for president. 

1845— Law firm of Lincoln and Herndon organi 

1846 — Elected to Congress over Peter Cartwright, frontier 

evangelist and Democrat. 

1848 — "Stumps" the Eastern States for Zaobary Taylor, 

1849 — Failure to secure the appointmenl asComni f thr 

General Land Office. Offered the goi n Dorship of Oi agon, 

which he declines. 

1854 — The principle <>f popnlai otj proclaimed. ami 

the first of Lincoln's debates with Stephen \. I •■ nglanon 
the slavery question. Again chosen t<« the I ire, 

but resigns to become the "Anti-Nebraska " oandii 
for United state- Senator, withdrawing In fn\<>i ol 
Lyman Trumbull, who is elected. 

1856 — Joins the Republican party, and i 11 tea f"i 

vice-president on tin- firsl Republican national fctokel 
headed by John C. Fremont 

1858 — Contests Douglas's seat in the Unit* In n 

remarkable series of debates, but tails <-f election 
narrow majority. 

1859— Speaks for the Republicans of Ohio at Colombo* and 

Cincinnati, and visits Ka\ 

1860— Cooper Institute Speech in N.u York Ctyj In 1 I 

followed by a tour of New England with - in 

Connecticut, Rhode Island a n. 1 \. -v. Hampshire. Ill; 
Republicans at Decatur make him their candi< 
president. Nominated for the president 
Convention over William H. Beward o! 
elected as the "Rail Candidate" in November 



CHRONOLOGY 13 

L881— Lc pringfield f<>r Washi] speaking at many 

points in Indiana. Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and 

knsylyania on his way. [nan rident of the 

United 31 Ifarofa I. Assault upon Fort Bnmter, 

April 13, and beginning deral 

Sun on July 21. Calls foi troops. 

on and Blidell, ami a narrow escape from 

: m ith < ii.-at Britain. 

McClellan's advance into '- i fur the nnsnecessfnl 

initilar undoing at the Beoond 

of Bull Ron, and the battll i, which 

orthern movement. Emancipation p< 

MoClellan reliei ed from duty 
to I 

'- l>;iti<'ii proclaimed January 1. The <! 

Appointment «>f ll<M>krr to command 
the Ai mv of 1 le <'f Chancellors^ ille 

rth. Meade 

' arg, .Inly 1, 

hioh the < Jonfj i drn en Booth 

'• ami bis 

ill tin- V. U mii-M. The 

\ ictories nrmi! 

1 '':imander-in- 
1 ieoln n for tlm pi 

ilood) I Wilderness, and 

operations in 
the . . pture of AI lanta, 

hi- n ,,f Lincoln ! 

second ten Ian, the Demoa didate. 

I • mil Intendment 

t<> the stati -. Hampton I ith Con 

1 . nation <>f 

bmond ami I Lincoln 

tichmond, returning from which be ifl shot by 

nWilki In Ford's Theatre, Washington, April 

it heath April 16, and burial in Springfield, Illinois. 

M | 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



CHAPTER I 

i:\ki.y i. u i; 



I\ tin- crisis that ;ti «»><• in tin- a flairs of the Amer- 
ican states, arraying section agaiusl section in a 
trial of the fundamental nature of the Union for the 
sake of the i»la< k slave, and t'<>r tin- preservation or 
overthrow <>f tin- economic system <»t' winch he was 
the i»;i-h part, the opportunity was afforded for tin* 
nnfolding <>t as man} different t \ pes «•!' character as 
can wrll be compacted into human form. It was 

not a stru^le developed m a da\ t<» reveal tin- am 

bitioo and contribute to theglon of a Ciesur or a 
Napoleon. It was a difference of slow development. 
It reached its crucial point naturally, and qo band 
could >ta\ the inevitable conflict. There was no 

man, woman <»r child on either side in the struj 

whose empathies were no! moved more or less 

strongly, who did not feel the pinch of poverty , the 

lit <.i' sorrow and distress, and did not .si-h for 

ce with victory, or that I without victory, 

lou- before the desirable result was attained. 



16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

One man there was, however, who by reason of 
the position to which he was called bj bifl fellows, 
conpled with his own sensitive and responsive bem 
perament, carried upon his Atlantean shoulders the 
whole nation's share of burdens on the Union side. 
What are the ingredients of greatness Ln men can 
never be known since no two have been or will 
ever be great in the same way, and what were the 
characteristics which raised Abraham Lincoln to 
place with everlasting claim upon the world's at 
tentionwill be a subjecl of discussion with bisb 
raphers for many generations. His wanton assa 
nation at a time of public excitemenl raised op 
eulogists on every hand, and years of graceless non 
entity as an ex-presidenl saved him from Bemi ob 
livion and the possible detraction growing out of 
later movements, which sometimes neutralize the 
impression created l>\ the mosl brilliant career. 
While his great, generous nature \\;i^ needed, 
Lord Russell declared in the British Bouse of 
Lords after the perpetration of Wilk< Booth's 
crime, "to temper the pride of victory and assu 
the misfortunes which his adversaries had experi 
enced," the degree of wisdom 1m- would have 
brought to the difficult problem of reconstruction 
is a mystery that will never be solved. Moreover 
the cause Lincoln led, was overwhelmingly sue 
cessful, though only after years through which 
hope and despair surged up and down the country 
in alternating currents. Victorj more quicklj 
gained would have made the final achievement 



EAIM.Y LIFE 17 

seem vastly leas important With the victory 
came the triumph of a large national idea which 
will always appeal to the imagination and the sense 
of right of multitudes of people. In the process of 
preserving the Onion he had emancipated nearly 
four millions of Africans and wiped slavery off the 
map of the civilized world, forwarding a movement 
long recommended by sentiments of humanity and 
releasing, as time has shown, a large and fruitful 
from bondage to ;> scheme of labor unjustified 
and unjustifiable by anj modem system of political 

aomy . 

It' -nine of these things are accidents bo is all 
human existence an accident Birth, gaunt 
strength, political sagacity, friendships, Domina- 
tions, elections, life in tin- midst of conspiracy are 
all in a sense accidental. So long ;i^ there are 
American boys who are taught at their mother's 
knee that their destiny Is the White House, the 
storj <>i Lincoln's life \sill have its fascinations. 
II.- u.i- a man of tli»- people in their humblest 
walk-. Pen who have attained height have had so 
great a distance t<> rise. With do adventitious aid, 
though t'<>i long his progress \\:i^ slow, his Dative 
powers which he assidnouslj cultivated, mnph-d 
with his opportunities, brought him the recognition 
he conrted ami desert ed i<> w in. 

He 'MUM- of a long line '•: pioneers. Samuel Lin 
coin, ill.- immigrant ancestor reached Massachusetts 
from Norwich, England, in L638. Through Mor 
n and In-- son ftfordecai, who removed fii^t to 



18 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

New Jersey and then to Berks County, Pennsyl 
vania, about sixty miles northwest of Philadelphia ; 
John who in 1750 settled in Rockingham County on 
the present western border of old Virginia we reach 
Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of the sixteenth 
President of the United States. Before the Amer- 
ican Revolution had yet ended, this Abraham Lin- 
coln was attracted to Kentucky through his friend- 
ship for Daniel Boone, took np seme virgin tracts 
in Jefferson County near the present site of Louis- 
ville and, returning to his old home, wound op In - 
affairs and emigrated with his family to this new 
land of promise. He had been in Kentucky l>ut a 
short time when in 1784, while working in some 
cleared land with his sons, an Indian picked him 
off with a shot from the bush. An older bod ran 
to the cabin for the rifle and. aiming it well, 
avenged the death of his father just as the >a \ 
came out of cover to attack the youngest boy, 
Thomas, a child six years old, left beside the 
corpse. Thomas, who thus saw his father die and 
who so narrowly escaped with his own life, became 
twenty-five years later the father of Abraham Lin 
coin, the American war president, named for this 

sturdy frontiersman m1i«) fell a prej to the bl I 

thirst of the Kentucky Indian. The wife, hit with 
a family of children in a wild country, abandoned 
land claims of large future value and settled in 
Washington County in central Kentucky, B more 
populous region, where the children grew to man 
and womanhood, totally illiterate. Thomas, who 



EARLY LIFE 19 

became a carpenter, could not write his own name 
when he married Nancy Hanks, his employer's 
niece, June L2, L806, although under her instruc- 
tion he later Learned to form his Letters. 

Thomas brought his young wife no fortune; she 
brought him no dower. Few young couples in the 
backwoods were so j r, and their condition under- 
went no improi ement The head of the family was 
migratory and thriftless, a rolling stone gathering 
nothing to him. After tin- birth of one child, a 
daughter Sarah, he removed westward^ to a place 
in Bardin, no* La Rue County, Kentucky, built a 
cabin on a small, rocky and unfruitful farm where 
on February r_\ L809,) the second child, Abraham, 
entered a woi 1«1 Long to be to him a bleak home full 
of poverty, hard manual Labor and the coarsest 
personal experience. 

( m this farm the Lincolns remained for four years 
when thej removed :i short distance t<» another of 
iter size and better promise, but it was not Long 
re Thomas' restless spirit lured him awaj again. 
This time bis destination was another state, Indiana. 
Loading his kit of tools and four hundred gallons 
of whiskej upon a rude raft he floated down the 
tributaries of the Ohio to that river and then west 
on its broader surfaces i<> the country In- had in 
Hew. Once his rati capsized, when he lost most <>i 
his whiskey ; although he fished out his tools, and 
after visiting the wilderness which had attracted 
him from Kentucky, fixed upon a site for his new 
home in Perrj Countj near tin- present town of 



20 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Gentryville. Keturning on foot for hifl family he 
brought them and all his earthly possessions on the 
backs of two borrowed horses into the Indiana t i in 
ber, leaving them through one winter with do slid 
ter but a shed built of poles, open to the frosts and 
snows upon one side. Even when a cabin took the 
place of this rude "camp" he Left it for two or 
three years without floor, doors or window a. 

Here in the primeval American wood Abraham 
Lincoln spent his boy ho< k 1 . Bis bed was of leaves 
raised from the ground by poles, resting apon one 
side in the interstices of the Logs of which the hut 
was built, and upon the other in crotches of sticks 
driven into the earth. The skins of animals si 
forded almost the only covering allowed this truly 
miserable family. Their food was of the simplest 
and coarsest variety and very scarce. Bo black aj> 
peared this period i n Lincoln's life, though be was one 
whose pride did not take him far above bis origins, 
that he later never of his own choice reverted bo it 
Among all those who listened t<» his reminiscence 
and anecdote, not one recalls having heard more 
than the barest allusion to these dart years. Many 
old frontiersmen in America hark back with bappi 
ness in their eyes to the good old times when they 
slept in attics, rising before daybreak to find heaps 
of snow upon their beds and to warm their ban* 
feet of frosty mornings in the spots vacated l>\ cows 
in the field as the animals were brought in for tin- 
milking; but so painful was Lincoln's recollection 
of his squalid boyhood and its woeful lark of light 



EARLY LIFE 21 

thut he was content to let it be a forgotten chap- 
ter. 

Nor did he of choice often refer to the period, 
though it was somewhat better, which immediately 
followed. Succumbing to the border hardships the 
wife and mother * 1 i * -< 1 in tin- autumn of L818 of an 
epidemic which tin- people knew as "milk sick" 
and which seems to have been a violent fever. It 
first attacked the cattle, coming perhaps from their 
eating a poisonous herb, and then ravaged the 
human family, terminating fatally in a lew days. 
Doctors, medicines and even the tolerably decent 
comforts of life were many miles away from this 
isolated camp. Thomas Lincoln made the coffin 
with his own ha ml-, the grave was dug in a el en red 
Space in the forest and there Nane\ Hanks Lincoln 
was buried. It was months after before it was 
practicable to secure a preacher who, when he came, 
gathered the family about him in the wood and 
,s|»oke ;i f. u words over the mound of sod. 

It was not long before Thomas Lincoln returned 

to his old home in Kriitmk\ and despite his repu- 
tation for thriftlessness ami the unattractivehess of 

the home he had t<> offer, made his loss g 1 very 

promptly bj bringing out Sails Bush Johnston, an 
old flame, now the widow with several children of 
the jailer of I laid in County. With her came some 
bedding, woolen clothing, a few pieces <>f fur- 
niture and living utensils, a kind motherly manner 
and the ability and will to put her husband to work. 
He was persuaded to add doors and windows to the 






:. :. 



24 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

pegs, which served as a ladder to his Lodgings in 
the attic, he hid the book under the rafters. The 
rain which came in before morning soaked the 
leaves so that he was compel le< I to go to the farmer 
from whom he had procured ii and offer to make 
good the loss. That little philanthropic man * \ 
acted as its price three days' work in a corn field, 
and at the end of that time the damaged volume 
came into the boy's absolute possession. 

The books within his reach were read and re read 
with avidity. He learned them by heart, mai le 
notes from them in his copj -books, R rote composJ 
tions and rude doggerel, and declaimed from time 
to lime to the men in the harvest field, at house 
raisings, log-rollings and wolf hunts. He, ho* 
ever, was less likely to impress the rough folk around 
him with a sense of being something apart from 
them by his greater Learning than by his superior 
size and strength. When he was eighteen or nine 
teen he had attained practically his full height 
which was about six feel four inches. !!«• was 
familiarly known as a Lon- Shanks." He shot up 
into the air much faster than his clothing could !>•' 
altered to keep pace, and for years after there was a 
kind of hiatus between his trousers and the tops of his 
brogans, which the frontier tailors were onable to 
fill in. Strong as an ox he early engaged in feats 
of muscle, lifting logs, wrestling with other boys in 
the neighborhood,— a lank, awkward Herculean 
farm-hand who, if he had read two or three 
books unknown by his fellows, was still not 



EARLY life 25 

seriously regarded as likely material for a President 
of the United States. " Ee could strike with an 
axe, 5 hi old companion, " a heavier blow than 

anj man. II*- could sink an axe deeper than any 
of his fellows." 

When nineteen years old an opportunity pre- 
sented itself for a trip to New Orleans. Chiefly l>y 
his own labor he had raised a quantity of produce 
for which the laniih desired a market, and an 
arrangement was made with Mr. Gentry, the man of 
affairs in the near-by village of Gentryville, by 
which he agreed to furnish a Aatboat, complete the 
cargo ami send along his son t<» assist in navigating 
the primitive vessel and in disposing of the goods. 
An incident occurred npon this journey to which 
Lincoln often afterward referred. Through this 
boat h<- earned his first dollar. The river Bteamers 
in those days took on their i>; rs in mid- 

stream. There were no wharves at which to land, 
and two men who came down t<> the shore with 
their trunks i d him to scull them out into 

the current. Thej paid him a dollar for the 
service, a larger sum of monej than he had ever 
up t<» that i ime been aide to call his own. 

The voyage in other respects was not uneventful. 
When near Baton Rouge, Lincoln and his companion, 
after t\ ing np for the night, were attacked by some 
black ruffians. Abraham ><»>u put them to flight 
with a club. His powerful arm, the gang, though 
large, could not withstand. Several of the men 
were knocked overboard, and the two Hoosier boys 



26 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

pursued them some distance iu short*, returning to 
release their boat from its moorings and seek safer 
quarters down-stream for the rest of the night 

Thomas Lincoln had remained in Indiana Longer 
than any one who knew him had righl to antici- 
pate. In 1830 he was off again for the alluring 
West, and settled in Illinois where Abraham was 
destined to make his career in his country's 
politics. Always in the wash of the waves as thej 
beat into the West in the greal movement <>i* 
immigrants the Lincoln household \\a^ again Bel in 
motion. John Hanks, the most reliable male 
member of this motley family, had gone to Macon 
County the year before and on his representations 
Thomas Lincoln made over his mortgaged farm to 
Mr. Gentry in the village, packed his effects in a 
wagon drawn by a double yoke of oxen and with 
all his kin in his train Bet out through forest 
and over prairie for the m-w state. Coming to 
John Hanks' place they selected a tract of land 
near him on the north fork of t he Sangamon Rii er. 
Here a new cabin was to 1»<- built of Logs and 
Abraham, assisted by Banks, with an axe felled a 
number of walnut trees, splitting enough rails to 
fence in fifteen acres, thereby establishing a 
reputation which thirty years later strengthened 
him immensely with the "plain people" from 
whom he sprang and whose rotes were needed to 
put him into the place where he could applj bifl 
politicial genius to the task of preserving the Union 
of the American States. 



EABLY LIFE 27 

At this time Illinois contained a population of 
about L50,000; Chicago was little more than a 
straggling village around a fort on Lake Michi- 
gan. The state literally Leaped into wealth and 
prosperity and in L860 its most distinguished citi- 
zen, the rail-splitter of thirty years before was 
one of L,700,000 people. Lincoln went forward 
with it. one of it- true 90ns, his ear to the ground 
for the vox populi, following all the ramifications 
of mind and conscience bj which thai thing — 
ie and incomprehensible— is created and finds 
expression. The new cabin, the new rail fence, 
and all the Bankses and Lincoln- in Illinois were 

at once obliged to face the most Bevere winter 
which settlers there had ever experienced. It was 
"the winter of tin- deep -now." The first months 
of L831 were marked by what we would to-day call 
a blizzard, but the cold which Bet in after an 
unprecedented tall of snow was prolonged, and the 
pioneers in this section suffered excruciating 
privations. For weeks they were prisoners In their 
iog lint-. 

When young Lincoln u r ot out of the burro w, in 
which he hail perforce consumed much valuable 
time, he made the acquaintance of an adventurous 
frontier trader named Denton Offutt The Latter 
having been told of the maritime skill of the lad 
from Indiana, gained in the navigation of the 
Mississippi, fitted out the future War President, 
John Johnston, the idle -on of Abe's stepmother, 
and John Banks foi another voyage to New Orleans. 



28 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

The boys were obliged first to build their boat from 
timber still uncut on government land, launch it in 
the Sangamon and float it down the current to New 
Salem, a village which had suddenly ans.n on the 
banks of that stream and which as suddenly disap 
peared after Lincoln on bis return from Louisiana 
had found a home there and a constituency willing 
to encourage his political ambitions for a period of 
seven years. The boat very promptly caught fast 
upon the breast of a mill dam. It \\a> Lincoln who 
released the craft and its crew from their sen- 
sational predicament i)> a plan of his own devising, 
which nearly twenty years later he made the ba^is 
of an invention "for Lifting vessels over shoals." 
A model of what seems to have been for all general 
purposes an entirely useless contrivance was pat 
ented and still reposes in I he -u\ eminent collection 
at Washington. This voyage, like that of three 
years before, was accomplished successfulrj ami the 
members of the party, finding passage on the return 
as far as St. Louis, cont Lnued t heir journey home <>n 
foot, a wearisome tramp which onlj young blood 
could enjoy. 

Abraham was now of age ami free from further 
obligations to build rail fences for bis father. Tin- 
debt of youth was paid, ami he Looked al><>ut him 
for opportunity to make himself mure than Thomas 
Lincoln was or ever e< mldl >e. [n August, L831, he 
left the cabin behind him forever and settled in 
New Salem on the Sangamon t<» become a clerk in 
a store which Ofl'ntt, the man who had capital 



EARLY LIFE 29 

the New Orleans venture, proposed to establish in 
that village. Meantime he "clerked" an election 
and piloted a boal through perilous places in the 
river for a man who was removing his family and 
his worldly goods t<> Texas. In Offutt's store 
Lincoln seems first to have won his title, "Honest 
Abe." When he innocently made mistakes in 
changing monej or his pack of goods were 

tmder weight, In* locked lus till and pursued his 
customers to make the neoessarj amends. 

It \\;h in New Salem, too, that Lincoln gained 
his wide repute for "rassling." To the young 
men in the West of that time wrestling matches 

were what football, baseball and Other athletic 

games are i" boys to-day. This sport furnished 
almost the only vent for youthful spirits and the 
love of muscular competition. Near the town, 
in a strip of timber called Clary's Grove, resided a 
number of brutal rowdies with whom Lincoln soon 
came into close relations. Dnder pretense of regu- 
lating the morals of the neighborhood they insulted, 
attacked and maltreated tip- inhabitants, and finally 
thej dared Lincoln to combat with their chief 
bully, Jack Armstrong. A.be'a greal strength could 

DOt !>•• mistaken by an\ obsen 6T, and rumors of his 

skill in wrestling had preceded him to New Salem. 
II, • took up the gauntlet thrown down bj Clary's 
drove and, although foul tactics were resorted to 
bj the bully's friend-, thre* with great dexterity 

hi- antagonist, who in the end was -lad U) get tree 

from the powerful grip of < ►ffutt's clerk. After this 



30 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

incident the "Boys" regarded Lincoln as one of 
them. They liked his pluck, his strength and his 
democracy, which counted for more in snch a cum 
munity than the gramma ]• ami Euclid which he was 
soon to learn in the intervals when trade was dull 
in the store, and a few more encounters of the Bame 
kind made him the undisputed champion in this 
part of Illinois. 

Offutt went the way of all snch adventurers and 
his store with him, so that Lincoln was booh readj 
for new pastures, [n the nick of time Black Hawk, 
the old chief of the Sac Indians, led five hundred 
mounted warriors across the Mississippi, thus no 
lating a solemn agreement he had lately concluded 
with the government of the I'nit.d States. It was 
now the business of the Federal troops, assisted i»\ 
some Illinois militiamen, to drive the Bai ages back 
into the west, Lincoln was ready. I !«• eoluntoei ed 
at the first tattoo, and of the companj formed in N. m 
Salem and the countrj roundabout he was elected 
the captain, the first office he had ever held and 
that one, he often said afterward, which gave him 
the most true satisfaction. Be was m.u Captain 
Lincoln and was off to the war w ith his band of rustic 
striplings, none of whom km-w anj more than he 
about military tactics or martial discipline. Y. are 
afterward this opera bouffe war was as rich a source 
of comical reminiscence as anything in Mi. Lincoln's 
life. "Once," he was wont to relate, "when I was 
crossing a field with a front of twentj men I could 
not for the life of me remember the prop< r word of 



EARLY LIFE 31 

command for evtting my company endwise in order 
to pass through a gate, so when we came near the 
opening in the fence I shouted, c This company is 
dismissed for two minutes when it will fall in again 
on the other side of the gate.' " 

In camp during these months in the spring and 
summer of L832, Lincoln again distinguished himself 
as a wrestler. A> the champion of northern Illinois 
la- was challenged by the champion of southern 
Illinois, who at the meeting was Boon lifted off his 

feet and thrown Hat upon his hack upon the tnrf. 
The speech in Congress manj years later when he 
emptied the \ ials of his quaint satire upon the fol- 
lowers of General Cass, who were endeavoring to 

make thai man a inilitais h« to on his Black Hawk 

War record, was the event of that Congressional ses 

sion. Those \s ho heard tin- speech never forgot it.' 
Lincoln, an Inoonspicuoufl new member, was 

seated in tin- last row mar a door. Ho chose a 

fitting moment, and gaining the floor strode up the 
aisle toward the speaker's chair, his gigantic and 
angular frame the centre of interest, as with one 
hand he flapped his rustj coat tails and with the 
other drove his points homo into the writhing 
Democrats. Wnile the House roared at his pero- 
rations In- returned t" consult his notes, sip a glass 
of vrater and again >all\ out to tin- charge in the 
same manner. ll<- was himself an Indian war 
veteran, he said, who had fought and hied when 
Black Hawk raised his war whoop in Illinois. If he 
1 Bioe'i ■• I:. • liniaoenoea <-f Lincoln," p. 220. 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

had not bent his sword like General Cass, he had 
bent his musket. If Cass picked whortleberries he 
had eaten wild onions. The only blood either of 
them had seen in that campaign could be ascribed 
to the assaults made upon them by the mosquitoes. 
But for a time, though he had forgotten the en 
joyment of the sensation, Lincoln was something of 
a hero himself. When his company's term hades 
pired its captain reenlisted as a private. Be was 
mustered out at length in Wisconsin, and was left to 
make his way home with some companions on foot 
and by canoe. Sore with travel and half starved, 
the warriors reen lend New Salem onlj ben days be 
fore the August elections for the legislature. Be 
fore volunteering for the war he had announced In 
a printed hand-bill thai he was a candidal*' for 
legislative honors, and would appreciate ii if his 
fellow citizens of Sangamon County would rally to 
his support. His return so Late in the campaign 
left him little time for elect Ioneering, and I here were 
in that day no war "extras" i<» describe hia vj<> 
rious charges on the Indians during his absence. 
He was running as a Whig, an oul and oul ('lav 
man who favored a national bank, a protective 
tariff and internal improvements in a state servilely 
devoted to Andrew Jackson. Ili^ political associa 
tions were of his own choosing, for his antecedents 
bound him to no organization. It was a struggle 
of almost thirty years to I <.<>><■ Illinois from its 
attachments to a party which freely gave t" 8teph< a 
A. Douglas and its other leaders tin- rewards thai 



EAELY LIFE 33 

Lincoln in a penniless youth had relinquished his 
claim to, when he fell in behind Henry Clay. 

The most exciting event that ever occurred in the 
brief life of New Salem was the arrival there early 
in L832, before Lincoln had enlisted for the Indian 
campaign, of "the splendid upper cabin steamer 
Talisman 1 ' from Cincinnati. She came out the 
Ohio, and np tli»- Illinois and the Sangamon until she 
could ;:<' no farther tor tin- branches overhanging 
the stream. Lincoln and a bodj of skilful woods- 
men went out with axes t<> eiit a way for the boat, 
and it finally ascended the little river to the mani- 
fest delight of the citizens, sine.- the exploit of 
the Talisman had proven that the Sangamon was a 
navigable stream, every Legislative candidate who 

laid claim l<» popular Support DttUSt 1>«' an advocate 

of Liberal appropriations Jo improve the channel by 
taking out the snags, so that New Salem might 
have direct steamship communication at once with 
Yokohama, Hongkong and Liverpool. 

Lincoln was the man for this campaign. Al- 
though but a few days remained, lie entered the 

Contest with a will, ami made several speeches in 

favoi of internal improvements. "I am young,' ' 

lie .said in his circular to the people, "and un- 
known to man] of you. I was born and have ever 
remained in tin- most humble walks of life. I have 
no wealth; or powerful relations or friends to 
recommend me. M\ case is thrown exclusively 
upon the Independent voters of the county ; and 
if elected the] \\ ill have conferred a favor npon me 



34 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to 
compensate. But if the good people in their wis- 
dom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I 
have been too familiar with disappointment to be 
very much chagrined." 

This language in a man of twenty-three, "too 
familiar with disappointment to be very much cha- 
grined," is the index to a mind that was always 
characterized by moody introspection, approaching 
fatalism. It was the element of character which 
before he had a gray hair in his head caused him to 
be generally known as "Old Abe." The disap- 
pointment came, despite the war record he had 
opportunely gained. Sangamon County, then 
sparsely settled and undivided, had an ana of 
several thousand square miles, and the Liveliest 
campaigner could not have reached all iis scattered 
hustings in so brief a period, h was the only time 
in his life Lincoln was defeated for elective office. 
A very gratifying evidence <.t' the affection in 
which he was held at home was tun ml in the (net 
that only three votes out of nearly three hundred 
were cast against him in his owe precinct of New 
Salem. 

Lincoln was now again at the mercy of the ele- 
ments. No more soldiering and no more election 
eering offered at the moment, and his great frame 
must be sustained constantly. He had definitely 
cut loose from his father's poor shelter, and was now 
swinging in the current of the world. Be canvassed 
the whole situation. Be might become a Mack- 



EARLY LIFE 35 

smith. He might again become a farm-hand, an 
employment for which he had unconcealed distaste 
and little competency except unusual strength. 
The way opening he returned to merchandising in 
a "grocery," the name for a store in which liquors, 
tobacco, sugar, coffee, iron tools and muslins are 
all together kepi on sale to satisfy the varied de- 
mands of a frontier population. The store had 
been owned and managed by the Herndons, rela- 
tions of his future law partner in Springfield. In 
the transfer, one of the part uers had sold his interest 
in the undertaking to an idle fellow named Berry, 
while Lincoln book the other half of the business, 
payment being made by promissory notes. Thus 
was established the firm of Berry and Lincoln 
which a little Later purchased the stock of a rival 
merchant, thus obtaining undisputed control of the 
trade in the village. Berry early displayed a ruin- 
ous fondness for Strong drink and Lincoln with 
head plopped upon a roll of calico prints at full 
Length on the counter w;^ given to the perusal of 
Blackstone and Chitty. In summer when the days 
were warm he could be seen outside the store door 
on his back under an oak-tree, a hook m hand. 
Bitting on his shoulder-blades, throughout his life a 
favorite attitude, he shifted his position with the 
sun by the use of his Ion- Legs which rested on the 
trunk of the oak, those Legs of which it was said 
that he could twice wrap one about the other, but 
whose amplitude he never regretted since it was his 
belief that the limbs of every man should belong 



36 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

enough to reach from his body to the ground. 
Thus it was that the business " winked out," in the 
expressive phrase of the time and Lincoln was lefl 
with a debt so hopelessly stupendous in the view of 
his friends that they christened it "the national 
debt." While he was a Congressman in Washington 
in 1848 his partner, Herndon, was still receiving 
remittances to wipe out the last traces of this Linger 
ing incumbrance. He knew no weariness until la- 
had paid the last cent due on this old paper, but it 
long stood as a debt of honor, which the holders 
could not have rated in their own minds at its face 
worth. 

Lincoln, always with nothing to his name, was 
now a good deal less than a cipher in finance. He 
worked in the neighborhood as a plowman, a ban 
est-hand and a wood-cutter for his clothing and his 
board. In the spring of L833 he had received the 
appointment as postmaster at New Salem, The 
mails arrived once a week, his tecs were insignif 
cant and he literally kept the post office in his hat. 
As he went to work at some neighboring Barm he 
carried the letters with him and often delivered 
them to their owners as he met them <m the way, 
He continued to hold this office for abonl three 
years when New Salem, dwindling in population, 
ceased to be a post station. 

Lincoln, in many respects as shifting and migra 
tory as his father, always Looking abonl him for 
larger opportunities and better situations dow took 
up the study of surveying. The count; surveyor 



EARLY LIFE 37 

needed au assistant in the work of plotting out 
farms for the settlers now flocking into Illinois and 
Lincoln, already fond of mathematics, applied him- 
self assiduously for a time until he had mastered 
the art. He plotted quarter seetions, located roads 
and by travel widened his acquaintance in the 
county. Always a popular figure wherever he went 
he gathered to him new friends, still wrestling from 
time to time and freely engaging in rough tests of 
strength much in vogue in the rustic western settle- 
ments. Once tie accomplished a prodigious feat in 
carrying saw Logs heavy enough for four men. 
Willi harness on his hips he raised a box contain- 
in- a half ton of stones and ou another occasion on 
a wager Lifted a barrel of whiskey and drank from 
tin- bung. !!<• could throw a cannon ball or maul 
farther than anj of his competitors. The story 
telling propensity which had been strong in his 
father was being developed at every opportunity. 
He was speaking in eloquent tropes from stumps 
and store boxes for a deeper and wider Sangamon. 
And he was making himself stronger and stronger 
with the people who again in August, L834, would 
choose representatives m the Legislature. Demo 
crate ;is well us Whigs could enjoy the good fellow- 
ship of this man of the people who now as always 
was a truer democrat than that chief of democrats, 
" ( >ld Hickorj ." had ever been. 

Lincoln asked the advice of Major John T. 
Stuart, his old comrade at arms in the Black Hawk 
War from whom he borrowed rninbrous leather back 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

law books. The volumes tied in a bundle, dang- 
ling from the end of a stall' thrown over his 
shoulder, as he strode to and from Springfield, the 
county seat,— we have a picture which illnsl rates his 
early interest in the law. Stuart who had been 
elected when Lincoln fell by the way in 1832 ad 
vised his young friend to make the canvass with 
the result that the latter ran ahead of the whole 
ticket, leading Stuart's poll by more than 200 votes. 
The capital of Illinois, at the time a state of 
about 250,000 people, was located at Vandalia and to 
that place Lincoln repaired with his delegation to 
make the laws for his fellow citizens. Many of the 
legislators walked to town while others came <>n 
horseback and in buggies. Clad in bine jeans with 
no metropolitan polish, his conspicuous figure, in- 
stinct with its homely wit, was transferred from 
New Salem to what was then the most fashionable 
centre of civilization on the "Sucker" frontier. It 
might not seem very elegant as reckoned by our 
present standards for such things, but thither came 
legislators, lobbyists and office seekers. ju>i us they 
come to capitals to-day : among the latter class 
Stephen A. Douglas, who Lincoln said was "the 
least man" he had ever seen. Lincoln was on 
doubtedly one of the largest Douglas had ever 
beheld, and was soon to become celebrated as a 
member of that picturesque group called the " Long 
Nine." In this legislative session the state was 
redistricted, and to the county of Sangamon, two 
senators and seven representatives were assigned. 



EARLY LIFE 39 

The people of the county at the next election, in 
18.36, returned as their representatives at Vandalia 
nine men, Lincoln among them, each one of whom 
was more than six feet in height, in corporeal pro- 
portions as imposing a body of statesmen as any 
capital may ever hope to receive out of the lap of 
plenty from which legislatures are derived. 

Lincoln again made a display of his popularity 
by coming out at the head of the poll, and as the 
people's servant, which each member claimed to be, 
was the Leading figure in his delegation. The 
Whigs had assumed control of the county to hold it 
so long as the party continued to be a force in poli- 
tics, and Abraham Lincoln was their chief . Hisre- 
sponsible duties seem nol to have been performed 
with the wisdom winch marked his public action in 
subsequent years, and it were well if this period 
could be blotted from a biographical record which 
in most respects so signally adorns the history of 
America, the history Indeed of the entire Anglo- 
Saxon race. The movement to navigate the San- 
gamon was but one cog in a wheel that had now 
begun to move until it caught the whole state, and 
in truth many other states in the vortex of its revo- 
lutions. Xot only wa> each small stream to be 
straightened and dredged, but a great canal to con- 
neei Lake Michigan and the Mississippi watershed 
and other artificial waterways were projected to- 
gether with railroads to crisscross the prairies in 
every imaginable direction. Places without in- 
habitants grew to si/. • almost instantaneously. The 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

magic gourd was outdone in Chicago, whose first 
impetus was received in this period of hope and 
prosperous illusion. Bonds were voted without re- 
gard to ways and means for paying the interest or 
the principal of the debt, and gangs of men were 
actually set to work upon these vast ill-considered 
undertakings before the realization of their utter 
lunacy was arrived at by the legislators who made 
the laws, or the people who in the final resort were to 
bear the charges for so much artificial prosperity. 
No one man was blamable over and above the 
others for this season of political error and wrong, 
but Lincoln bore his part with enthusiasm. 

The "Sangamon Chief" also labored at this ses- 
sion to secure the removal of the state capital from 
Vandalia to Springfield, his own county seat, and 
by skilful manoeuvring and a balancing of rival in- 
terests and claims gained the victory. Returning 
home with his eight strapping confederates, the 
heroes of the countryside, with bells ringing, "fire 
balls" tossed into the air at night, candles at the 
windows in the villages and banquets at which 
toasts were drunk to 

" Abraham Lincoln : He has fulfilled t he expec- 
tations of his friends and disappointed the hopes of 
his enemies," 

"A. Lincoln : One of Nature's noblemen," 
he was welcomed back to his seat in the corner 
store at New Salem to describe the adventures of the 
winter to the " Boys" of Clary's Grove. 

But Lincoln was now passing out of the lives of 



EAELY LIFE 41 

his old associates. The little river town was too 
narrow a stage. It was "winking out" like the 
grocery store, its streets to be ploughed up for corn- 
fields. Its most distinguished citizen was induced 
to settle at the county seat and there, having in the 
meantime acquired by private reading a sufficient 
mastery of the law to practice at a bar then requir- 
ing no great degree of erudition, was admitted to 
partnership with Major John T. Stuart, with whom 
he had served in the Spy Battalion against the In- 
dians. Stuart manifested a great deal of interest 
in the young man in the legislature, but he was al- 
ready deeply absorbed in politics. Defeated for 
Congress in 1836 he was more successful two years 
later, being elected over so adroit an opponent as 
the young and ambitious Stephen A. Douglas. 
Little time remained therefore for his practice, and 
Lincoln was not to enjoy the inestimable advantages 
of careful tutorship or even of good example from 
his senior in the law office. 

Upon his removal to Springfield he was by no 
means unknown, for a Legislator who had been the 
principal influence to make that place the capital 
of the state, had not been allowed to pass without 
appreciative notice. But the town then contained 
less than 1,500 white inhabitants, and civilization 
was at no great height. Lawyers received their 
clients in dingy offices which were fitted up over 
small shops. Merchants lived in their stores and 
with one of these Lincoln early concluded an ar- 
rangement for sleeping quarters. Joshua F. Speed, 



42 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

like Major Stuart's young law partner, was a Ken- 
tuckian, the son of a rich farmer in the Blue Grass 
land. He had lately settled in Springfield to open 
a miscellaneous store. Lincoln entering it oik 4 day 
to purchase some bedding and furniture for his 
lodgings had in a little while selected so many 
articles — about thirty dollars' worth — that he was 
unable to pay the bill and frankly owning in the 
hopeless mood that often seized him that lie prob- 
ably never could discharge the debt, if credit were 
allowed, Speed upon learning who his customer 
was invited him to share a bedroom in the store. 
Lincoln liked the suggestion, accepted the invita- 
tion and thus a beginning was made to a friendship 
which was of lasting value to the two men. 

Lincoln was now a citizen of the town which con- 
tinued to be his home until lie left it to go upon his 
grand national mission to Washington only to re- 
turn a martyred corse mourned by the whole civi- 
lized world. He had, after many essays and failures 
in other fields, given his allegiance nnquestioningly 
to law and politics, the avenues to his final success. 
Springfield to which he had come with his all com- 
prehended in a pair of saddle-bags on a borrowed 
horse, was as the capital of Illinois the meeting- 
ground for two streams, one from New England and 
the other from Kentucky and Virginia. They min- 
gled here to murk the waters of opinion that only 
the great war could clear, the New England currenl 
in curious irony furnishing in Stephen A. Douglas 
the South' s vigorous champion, while Kentucky senl 



EARLY LIFE 43 

to this battle-ground of opposite tendencies the man 
who might have much more easily come in on the 
Northern tide. Lincoln's social affiliations too were 
nearly all with the families whom Kentucky had 
contributed to the life of his adopted state. He was 
now in the groove that led him upward and onward, 
though neither he nor any friend could yet foresee 
his distinguished destiny. 

Lincoln and the law were still not on very close 
terms, for between his continued service in the leg- 
islature where efforts must be made to stem the 
financial panic which legislative and other follies 
had induced, and love affairs which came to disturb 
very deeply one of the greatest and most sensitive 
of hearts, the young barrister made little headway 
in his profession. Lincoln half realized by this 
time that he was the worst possible kind of a po- 
litical economist. The great scheme of internal 
improvements by which Illinois at command of law 
was suddenly to be converted into the Empire State 
of the WYst ignobly collapsed. Nevertheless the 
Statesmen of the frontier did not confess to their 
mistakes and only slightly abated their zeal in piling 
up debts which it was well-nigh necessary, later on, 
dishonestly to repudiate. 

In 1838 Lincoln was reelected to the legislature 
and being generally recognized as the leader of the 
Whig minority was Dominated for speaker. He 
came within one vote of an election, gave his influ- 
ence ungrudgingly in favor of more internal im- 
provements, though the markets were glutted with 



44 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

Illinois bonds, jumped with some party friends 
from the windows of the church in which the ses- 
sions were being held in order to break a quorum 
and obstruct the regular course of legislation, al- 
ways strengthening himself in the good esteem of 
the people with whom rough and ready statesman- 
ship was the only sort fully understood and appre- 
ciated. Lincoln was again elected to the legislature 
in 1840 in the hard cider, log cabin and 'coon cam- 
paign conducted by the Whigs against Martin 
Van Buren. In this exciting contest, of which a 
witness has said that it can " never have a parallel 
should the country have an existence for a thousand 
years," ' Lincoln was a presidential elector, slump- 
ing the state with industry. While Illinois could 
not be won away from the Democrats for "Tippe- 
canoe and Tyler too," he was no small factor in 
solidifying the Whig minority. This was Lincoln's 
last campaign for the legislature. He was again 
his party's candidate for the speakership, but was 
again defeated and with the ending of his fourth 
consecutive term in the state's lawmaking body, he 
entered upon another period of his life. 

1 E. B. Washburne in " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," 
p. 7. 



CHAPTER II 

BENEDICK AND LAWYER 

When Lincoln lived at New Salem he was a 
boarder, for a time at least, at a log tavern whose 
sides were covered with rough clapboards, kept by 
James Rutledge, the host like his guest being an 
immigrant from Kentucky, although of South Car- 
olina origins. The tavern-keeper had nine chil- 
dren, one of whom Anne, a beautiful young girl, 
was a great favorite in the neighborhood. Her 
rosy cheeks made havoc with Lincoln's affections 
and he was well filled with his passion about the 
time he was first chosen to represent Sangamon 
County in the state legislature. She, taken sick, 
died in August, 1835, and this event, it is freely 
declared, though not without qualification by some 
biographers who have found that too much empha- 
sis is placed upon the touching romance, went far 
to darken all his future life. Alone in her presence 
for a time before her death he was soon plunged in 
dangerous abstraction. He said later in reflecting 
upon his moods at this period that he did not trust 
himself to carry a pocket-knife. For several weeks 
he was under the surveillance of a friend, who lived 
a mile outside the village, until he could recover 



46 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

his equilibrium, but he was reserved for some 
further misadventures of the heart. 

His next affair seems to have involved a woman 
of rather portly appearance and no longer very 
young when she crossed his pathway, Mary Owens 
by name, although when fame came to Lincoln 
there were several rumors of women in the West 
who had rejected his suit, just as there were men in 
Kentucky to say that they had fished him out of 
the stream in his boyhood with a sycamore branch. 
Mary Owens was also a Kentuckian, and while vis- 
iting her sister in Illinois came to fill, or at least to 
make less vacant the void in Lincoln's heart. A 
lover who lacked any suggestion of skill in present- 
ing his suit, he seems to have desired marriage 
without feeling at all certain about the wisdom of 
the step. A faineant in his loves who experienced 
the force of the feeling without being very willing 
to take the natural consequences in the attempt to 
make any other happy by sharing his lot in life, he 
plainly wrote his " Friend Mary," that although 
he would abide by his decision to marry her if she 
wished, it was his honest opinion that she had 
" better not do it." It is not very surprising, 
therefore, that this romance of 1837 came to an 
unhappy end ; Miss Owens renouncing her lover, it 
was said, because of his poverty and personal awk- 
wardness, but as likely as not because of his singu- 
larly undiplomatic way of conducting the negotia- 
tions. In a little while he was able to fliug off 
the burden of this disappointment and his sub- 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 47 

sequent course illustrates the truth of a poet's 
words : — 

" Naught of earth's so dead as a dead love — 
'lis the seasickness of the soul." 

In a letter to the wife of his friend, O. H. Brown- 
ing, Lincoln wrote in April, 1838, that he was glad 
to be well out of his kk scrape," since the lady was 
"over size," indeed u a fair match for Falstaff," an 
"old maid," who, in conspiracy with her sister, 
sought to capture him against his personal desires. 
Now, he added, i 1 1 have come to the conclusion 
never again to think of marrying and for this rea- 
son : I can never be satisfied with any one who 
would be blockhead enough to have me." But as 
the benedick says, " when I was a bachelor I never 
thought that I would be a married man," and Lin- 
coln in a little while was a suitor for the hand of 
Mary Todd. His loneliness in Springfield was 
almost past the comprehension of those who are 
without the power to fathom the depth of feeling 
of such a character as his, and who may not have 
known by personal experience the severity of the 
loss of a first love. His associates were mainly his 
friend Speed and the men who gathered at night 
around the stove in Speed's store, to listen to Lin- 
coln's racy anecdotes. He lounged in the offices in 
the court-house, and occasionally was an invited 
guest at the home of a fellow lawyer or legislator. 
From his own folk he was altogether separated, and 
had permanently raised himself well above their 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

plane of life. He had little communication with 
them henceforward except when mortgages were to 
be lifted and judgment notes paid, for his father 
continued to move from farm to farm and was still 
unable to make material progress in the world. So 
devoid of ambition was the family from which 
Abraham Lincoln sprang, in all its branches, that 
not one member appeared among the horde to beg 
the crumbs of office that fell from the great Repub- 
lican board during the war time, nor was one of 
them heard from, so far as evidence appears, except 
the Hanks who carried the fence rails into the Re- 
publican Convention of Illinois. They were not 
companions for this man whose character grew 
larger and larger each day that he lived, and who 
had already long since outdistanced them at every 
point. 

If Lincoln were to attain that success in politics to 
which his ambition called him loudly and con- 
stantly, he would need the social machinery alone 
to be provided through a home and a wife to pre- 
side over it. Mary Todd, born in 1818, therefore 
nine years Lincoln's junior, was the daughter of 
Robert S. Todd, a banker of Lexington, Kentucky. 
She came of an old Virginia family on one side and 
had direct connection through another line with 
General Andrew Porter of Pennsylvania, a well 
known soldier in the American Revolution. She 
had been brought up amid old Southern comforts 
and luxuries, and was of aristocratic feelings and 
tastes. She first visited Springfield in 1837 as the 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 49 

guest of her sister, the wife of Ninian W. Edwards, 
one of Lincoln's Whig political friends, and in 1839 
came out to make her home with that family. 
There the acquaintance with Lincoln began and 
ripened into friendship, affection and love, with 
occasional lapses in favor of Stephen A. Douglas 
and other young swains then in vogue at the capital 
of Illinois. Miss Todd was accomplished in music, 
dancing, the languages and the arts and refinements 
of life. Already she loved power and display, 
being in nearly all essential respects in training 
and temperament the contrary of the man who now 
paid her suit. 

If it be true, as is sometimes said, that in choosing 
Lincoln over Douglas she discerned the man who 
would some time make her mistress of the White 
House, and thus gratify a lively ambition, she 
must have had a rare talent in divination. The 
husband of her choice in 1840 was still far enough 
removed from that enviable goal, and none would 
have wagered a very large sum upon such a destiny. 
He was chosen despite the fact that he had learned 
scarcely anything of the art by which man can 
most tactfully gain the lady who is the object of his 
love. The heart again grew faint. He carried on 
painful debates in his mind as to whether or not 
marriage was the best state of life for either party con- 
tracting it, emphasized his own poverty and un- 
worthiness, until by self-depreciation he was in so 
nervous a condition as to cause his friends again to 
express a fear lest his reason might become wholly 



50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

1 1 1 lsettled. Whether we fully credit Herndon' s nar- 
rative or not when he alleges that the marriage 
was fixed for January 1, 1841, and that Lincoln 
failed to present himself for the preacher's seal, 
while bride and guests were left in the greatest 
embarrassment, it is certain that the relations were 
abruptly broken off, and the groom-to-be, dis- 
traught almost to insanity in self -searching, disap- 
pointment and remorse, was left a pitiful wreck. 
"I am now the most miserable man living," 
Lincoln wrote on January 23, 1841, to his partner 
Major Stuart then in Congress. "If what I feel 
were equally distributed to the whole human family 
there would be not one cheerful face on earth. 
Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell ; I 
awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is 
impossible ; I must die or be better it seems to 
me." 

Speed assumed an affectionate guardianship. 
This friend, the son of a wealthy farmer in 
Kentucky, having disposed of his interests in 
Springfield, induced Lincoln to accompany him to 
his home for a season of recuperation. By this 
warm-hearted family the young lawyer and 
legislator of Illinois was received with a hospitable 
kindness which he never forgot, and Speed to com- 
plete his capacity for sympathy during this visit 
himself fell under the lover's spell, being made a 
victim of a black-eyed Kentucky girl's attractions. 
At sight of this Lincoln seemed to take heart and 
leaving his friend to try the matrimonial experiment, 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 5i 

while he looked on to note the effects, his recovery 
followed hastily. Speed, also in a torment of doubt 
about the wisdom of his course, needed a friend's 
consolation which Lincoln gave generously, and the 
two together pursued their analyses and philoso- 
phies with mutual satisfaction, until the Ken- 
tuckian steeled himself for the deed and settled 
with his wife in his native state to lead a planter's 
life. 

Lincoln wished to know of his friend whether 
the actual experience justified earlier expectations. 
<I want to ask you a close question," he wrote to 
Speed, "are you now in feeling, as well as in 
judgment, glad you are married as you are f From 
anybody but me this would be an impudent 
question, not to be tolerated ; but I know you will 
pardon it in me. Please answer it quickly, as I am 
impatient to know." Speed declaring that he was 
"far happier" than he had ever expected to be, 
Lincoln, the reluctant lover still only half re- 
pentant, writes: "Since the fatal 1st of January, 
1841, it seems to me I should have been entirely 
happy, but for the never absent idea that there is 
one still unhappy whom I have contributed to 
make so. That still kills my soul. I cannot but 
reproach myself for even wishing myself to be 
happy while she is otherwise." Many have dwelt 
upon this incident in Lincoln's life irreverently, so 
unusual was his conduct of his love affairs, but as 
JNicolay and Hay, the most exhaustive of his many 
biographers have observed, his attitude is easily 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

explicable when his character is understood. 
"There are few men," as they say truly, "that 
have had his stern and tyrannous sense of duty, 
his womanly tenderness of heart, his wakeful and 
inflexible conscience which was so easy toward 
others and so merciless toward himself." If there 
be anything in the known world that will heal a 
breach created by cowardice on the wedding morn- 
ing it must be comprehended under the name of 
love and doubtless this explains why a Springfield 
dame sometime late in 1842 was able to bring 
Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd together and 
make the embers glow again. 

In August the Sangomo Journal published some 
letters from the "Lost Townships" in the frontier 
dialect attacking, in a satirical way, the conduct of 
the state government in which an irritable young 
Irishman, James Shields, then serving a term as 
Auditor was involved. The state was in the throes 
of paying the monumental debt which Lincoln and 
his fellow members of the legislature had con- 
tracted for internal improvements. Shields con- 
ceived that his honor had been wounded in these 
communications to the county paper and appealed 
to the editor for the name of the writer who had 
signed him or herself, "Rebecca." It seems that 
Lincoln had written at least one of the letters and 
in a spirit of mischievous fun Mary Todd, with 
whom there had now been a reconciliation, aided by 
a young lady friend, had also contributed to the 
series of printed interchanges, made the more 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 53 

entertaining to every one as soon as Shields' vanity 
had been visibly pricked. The editor, ignorant as 
to the course he should pursue, consulted Lincoln 
who said that he would publicly stand for his own 
as well as for the ladies' utterances concerning the 
Auditor of the state, and in a twinkling Shields 
challenged him to a duel. 

Shields led what may rightly be regarded as one 
of the most peculiar and striking political careers 
ever enjoyed by any one in America. An alien by 
birth he almost constantly occupied lucrative and 
honorable political posts. From the Auditor's 
office he was to be promoted to the Illinois Supreme 
bench. In a little while he was appointed Com- 
missioner of the General Land Office, from which 
place in the civil service, without a day's experi- 
ence in battle, he was made a Brigadier General in 
the Mexican War. The object of general ridicule, 
which however was no protection from a shot 
through the lungs, he came home with a fresh 
wound to receive his reward, an election as Doug- 
las's colleague in the United States Senate. Re- 
moving to Minnesota he became a United States 
senator from that state, was again appointed a 
Brigadier in the Civil War, being again wounded 
in a battle with Stonewall Jackson — and finally as 
an old man he was for a third time sent to the 
United States Senate — on this occasion from Mis- 
souri 3 of which state he was at the moment a resi- 
dent. 

Of such redoubtable stuff was the man who now 



54 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

sought Lincoln's gore, and the latter very promptly, 
seeming to fear the unfavorable opinion which his 
refusal to fight would invite, chose as weapons 
" cavalry broadswords of the largest size." If he 
had no intention of injuring his adversary he was 
no less determined not to be hurt himself, and he 
afterward explained that he had chosen this weapon 
because he knew that his arm was longer than 
Shields'. There were buggies and canoes, an 
island in the river, seconds, surgeons and an ex- 
change of details about the code, but just before the 
meeting took place two peacemakers appeared and 
persuaded Lincoln to apologize for his offensive 
words in the newspaper, and Shields to withdraw 
his challenge. Lincoln was wont to declare after- 
ward that he was more ashamed of his part in this 
duel than anything he had ever done in his life, un- 
less it be his escapade in jumping from the church 
window. An army officer who had called at the 
White House during the war, asked Lincoln if he 
had one time really accepted a challenge and gone 
forth to the dueling-ground. "I don't deny it," 
the President is said to have replied, " but if you 
desire my friendship you will never mention the 
circumstance again." 

How deeply Lincoln's willingness to represent 
them with broadswords may have impressed the 
ladies of the Springfield of 1842, we are able only 
to guess. In any case, he was married to Miss 
Todd, on November 4, 1842, at the home of her 
sister, in the presence of only a very few friends, 



BENEDICK xlND LAWYER 55 

though still not a very ardent believer in matri- 
mony, if we credit the testimony of the boy who 
after he had grown up declared that he had met 
Lincoln on the day of his wedding. Boylike, he 
inquired, " Where are you going dressed up so 
fine? " "To hell, I suppose," responded the mel- 
ancholy bridegroom, a story if it be not entirely 
true, sufficiently well indicates Lincoln's state of 
mind in reference to the marriage question when- 
ever it came into his life. 

Lincoln was now thirty-three years old. He took 
his bride to the Globe Tavern, where they con- 
tinued to reside until he built the frame cottage 
where the convention committee found him when it 
came down from Chicago to notify him of his 
nomination for the presidency. Four sons were the 
issue of this marriage : Robert Todd, who was in 
Harvard College while his father was President, 
joined Grant's staff late in the war, was Garfield's 
Secretary of War, and later the United States' 
Minister to England, born in 1843 ; Edward Baker, 
born in 1846, who died when about four years old ; 
William Wallace, born in 1850, dying at the White 
House, to make deeper the careworn furrows in his 
father's face, and Thomas, or " Tad," born in 1853, 
the President's inseparable companion in Wash- 
ington, who survived his father a few years. 

That the marriage was not accounted an entirely 
happy one, and that his expectations were not ex- 
ceeded as his friend Speed's had been is very cer- 
tain. It was an experiment in the blending of op- 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

posites. Who lacked the most in the balance of 
compatibility is a question which it would require 
a modern women's congress to decide. Certainly 
it cannot be urged for Lincoln that he was a hus- 
band to grace fashionable society. It has been 
said that he hated clothing. He had a habit of 
taking off his boots in his home or at his office ' ' to 
allow his feet to breathe," as he said, and some- 
times went to his own door in his shirt sleeves to 
receive Mrs. Lincoln's lady friends. After he was 
nominated for the presidency, he visited Chicago, 
accompanied by his wife. A lady of prominence 
socially called upon Mrs. Lincoln in her hotel to 
keep an appointment for a promenade. Lincoln, 
receiving the caller, apologized for his wife's tardi- 
ness, exj)laining that she would be down " as soon 
as she got all her trotting harness on." The wit- 
nesses to Lincoln's apparent contempt for polite 
social usages are as numerous as those who knew 
him well enough to formulate an estimate of his 
character, and the question may be submitted to 
the women of this generation whether in such a 
place their satisfaction would have been more com- 
plete than Mary Todd's. That Lincoln was a great 
sensitive organization of nerves, tendernesses and 
affections, none can dispute, and yet it is doubtful 
if he could be regarded as a perfect husband. Mrs. 
Lincoln's dispositional frailties and eccentricities, 
in some respects pronounced, called forth from him 
no words of blame, and that he did not fully meet 
the requirements of a gentleman, caused him many 



BENEDICK AND LAWYEE 57 

days and weeks of imhappiness each year that he 
lived, and contributed an indefinite sum, if the 
truth were known, to the mellowing of his nature 
and the development of that large, sympathetic and 
charitable interpretation of human motives, which 
was so useful a factor in enabling him to save the 
Union and emancipate the slave. 

Lincoln's knowledge of the law was still im- 
perfect. His reading was done under his own 
direction, and Major Stuart, whose partner he had 
been since his arrival in Springfield, was either 
absent as a Congressman in Washington, or else was 
laying his plans to get into Congress, during the 
entire time the two men were associated in business. 
Lincoln himself was interrupted by his engagements 
as a member of the state legislature, and at other peri- 
ods his love affairs abstracted him. It was fortunate 
from the point of view of his advancement in the 
law that this partnership was dissolved in April, 
1841, when he joined Judge Stephen T. Logan, the 
new firm answering to the alliterative name of 
Logan and Lincoln. Lincoln had had love affairs 
with at least three Kentucky women, and one of 
these had just become his wife. His most intimate 
friend in Springfield, Speed, was a Kentuckian. 
His first partner and friend of the Black Hawk 
War, Stuart, came to Illinois from Kentucky, and 
now his new partner, Logan, was a native of that 
state. 

The value of association with Judge Logan lay in 
the fact that he was accounted one of the ablest 



58 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

lawyers in the West. Unlike some of his colleagues 
at the bar, he did not regard the law merely as a 
stepping stone to political preferment. He pursued 
the practice for its own sake, and brought to bear 
upon Lincoln influences that were of great worth in 
inculcating a habit of closer application and deeper 
study of the principles underlying a case. 

Logan was if possible more careless of his dress 
than Lincoln. He was a small man with a weazen 
face which was topped by a great shock of frowzy 
hair. In an unbleached cotton shirt guiltless of 
cravat he was no prepossessing figure. His voice 
was shrill and ungrateful to the ear. When Lin- 
coln in Congress wished to describe a speech by 
Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, which had 
moved him deeply, he could think of no better com- 
parison of the speaker in a letter to Mr. Herndon 
than to say that he was "a little pale-faced con- 
sumptive man, with a voice like Logan's." In 
spite of its rather objectionable quality it was a 
voice that was listened to attentively, and it pleaded 
many important cases at the bar. The example of 
this diligent and hard-working practitioner made 
Lincoln a better thinker and a more careful rea- 
soner. The association continued until 1845, when 
Logan formed a new partnership with his son and 
Lincoln established an office of his own with a 
young man, William Henry Herndon, with whom, 
as Lincoln and Herndon, a business relationship 
continued until political duty called the senior 
member of the firm to a national scene. 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 59 

At this time lawyers in Illinois were an itinerant 
class, and several months in each year were passed 
in "buggies" or on horseback " riding the cir- 
cuit." The Eighth Judicial Circuit embraced four- 
teen counties and was presided over by Judge 
David Davis. The court sat two or three days or a 
week at one place, and then judge and advocate 
moved on to the next county town. Lawyers, wit- 
nesses, jurymen and clients swarmed the taverns 
and whiled away the time when being conveyed 
over the abominable roads, which were mere trails 
on the prairies leading from village to village, or 
when idly resting at night in some country inn, by 
relating and listening to amusing anecdotes. Lin- 
coln's mind soon became an overflowing storehouse 
for these stories, some of which he invented, all of 
which were amplified and adapted to the occasion 
in passing through his ingenious mind. On these 
journeys he perfected his knowledge of Euclid, gave 
some attention at night to astronomy, and committed 
to memory soliloquies from Shakespeare and sad 
ballads which harmonized with his constitutional 
moods. Incidentally there are accounts of his dis- 
mounting in the rain to assist fallen nestlings in re- 
gaining their beds of grass and down, and once he 
sadly damaged a suit of clothing to save the life of 
a pig which had become involved in a quagmire. 

It was a season in the history of the law in the 
West when a practitioner's native wit stood him in 
better stead than learning gained by laborious con- 
sultation of books for rules and precedents. In any 



60 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

rough and tumble contest of mother genius Lincoln 
knew no superior. In the employment of anecdote 
and witty turns of speech he could discomfit almost 
any adversary and while he was loath to resort to 
such methods, unless the provocation were severe, 
he won more than one case by the sheer force of 
ridicule. 

Once it is related that the opposing lawyer in a 
circuit court, the weather being warm, removed his 
coat and vest while addressing the jury. At that 
time in the West shirts were commonly buttoned in 
front. Only the fashionable in eastern cities had 
yet come to use the stiff bosoms which necessitated 
a fastening at the back of the neck. Lincoln see- 
ing that he had his adversary at a disadvantage 
with rustic jurymen got up and said : " Gentlemen 
of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think 
you will be at all influenced by the gentlemen's pre- 
tended knowledge of the law, when you see he does 
not even know which side of his shirt should be in 
front," a sally that won him the suit amid hilarious 
laughter, participated in by the whole court-room. 

On another occasion when the lawyer opposing 
him somewhat bumptiously and vehemently con- 
cluded his address to the jury, Lincoln in rebuttal 
rose and to the visible aggravation of the speaker 
who had preceded him, told the anecdote of the man 
who was lost in the prairie in a violent thunder- 
storm. Although by no means a religious man he 
fell on his knees and prayed : " Oh, Lord, if it is all 
the same to you give us a little more light and a 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 61 

little less noise." He frequently amused judge and 
jury by his lamentable efforts to pronounce the 
Latin words and phrases in law books which he 
made no pretense of being able to understand. 

In cases when wrong and injustice had been com- 
mitted upon the clients whom he represented his 
notes covering that portion of his argument were 
brief, "Skin the defendant." He was a master of 
the fiercest invective when aroused, and if he could 
once rid a case of its technicalities he and his clients 
never feared the result. He could sway a jury at 
will when his heart was in his work. A lawyer 
who accompanied him on the circuit has related 
that Lincoln could take greater liberties with the 
court and still keep within the bounds of orderly 
procedure than any one else then pleading at the 
Illinois bar, and this was largely because of his 
deep sense of justice and his cleverness in the use 
of apt and humorous anecdote. 

In the law, as in every field he ever entered, Lin- 
coln was original and unfettered by the conventions 
of the world. To a man who entered the office of 
his firm in Springfield one day to state his case, Lin- 
coln made this memorable reply : 

"Yes, we can doubtless gain your case for you ; 
we can set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads ; 
we can distress a widowed mother and her six 
fatherless children and thereby get for you six 
hundred dollars, to which you seem to have a legal 
claim but which rightfully belongs, it appears to 
me, as much to the woman and her children as it 



62 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

does to you. You must remember that some things 
legally right are not morally right. We shall not 
take your case, but will give you a little advice for 
which we will charge you nothing. You seem to 
be a sprightly, energetic man ; we would advise 
you to try your hand at making six hundred dollars 
in some other way." ' 

To a client who sought to involve his firm in the 
real estate business as an adjunct to the law he 
wrote : " As to the real estate we cannot attend to 
it. We recommend that you give the charge of it 
to Mr. Isaac S. Britton, a trustworthy man, and 
one whom the Lord made on purpose for such 
business." 

While Lincoln gained something in discipline of 
mind as the locomotive superseded the buggy, cir- 
cuits by reason of the rapid settlement of the coun- 
try were reduced in size, and the lawyer's profession 
was practiced with less regard for the personal 
equation and with greater consideration for its 
scientific principles, it was politics rather than the 
law to which he felt himself irresistibly drawn. In 
his campaigns for the legislature, he had won a high 
reputation as a ready and effective political speaker. 
At public auctions, county fairs and other popular 
gathering places, he was a familiar figure in his own 
district, and he was soon sought after by the Whig 
managers for larger campaigns. In 1840 he was 
placed upon the electoral ticket because it was 
recognized that he would be a useful agent in fol- 
1 Herndou, p. 346. 






BENEDICK AND LAWYER 63 

lowing from town to town the " hard cider " bands 
and " 'coons," by which it w r as hoped that the state 
might be made to bestow its electoral votes upon 
William Henry Harrison. With his friend Edward 
D. Baker, one of the cleverest of politicians, who 
was elected to Congress from a district in Illinois, 
in which he did not reside, and later to the United 
States Senate from Oregon, while his home was in 
California, being killed afterward at the head of 
his regiment at the battle of Balls Bluff ; John J. 
Hardin, killed in the Mexican War ; Major Stuart 
and other Springfield Whigs, Lincoln traversed the 
entire state on horseback, speaking nightly to the 
frontiersmen assembled to shout for ' i Old Tippe- 
canoe. ' ' He again led the electoral ticket in 1844, 
speaking in all parts of the state for his "beau 
ideal of a statesman" Henry Clay, who went down 
to defeat with what was probably the most devoted 
personal following that ever honored any political 
leader in America. A man who appealed to their 
emotions and made his name a magical force for 
no reason, in the view of the dispassionate historian 
of to-day, commensurate with the intrinsic impor- 
tance of his measures, his failure to win the Presi- 
dential prize cast gloom over the entire Whig or- 
ganization. 

In the campaign for Clay against Polk, Lincoln's 
engagements called him to Indiana, where he met 
many of his boyhood friends of Gentryville and its 
neighborhood. Already he had been mentioned 
for Governor, and was eagerly looking forward to 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a term in Congress. Aspirants were so plentiful 
among the Whig lawyers in the Springfield district, 
that those whose political proportions marked them 
out for Congress were compelled to take their turns, 
and each must content himself with a single term. 
Lincoln's opportunity came in 1846 when, after an 
exciting summer campaign up and down the dis- 
trict, he was elected by a fine majority over Peter 
Cartwright, the famous frontier evangelist whom 
the Democrats had nominated to oppose his can- 
vass. For the reason that the people feared too 
close a mingling of their religion and their politics, 
or else because of Lincoln's personal popularity, 
which had been mightily promoted by his incessant 
traveling as a lawyer over Judge Davis's circuit, 
the Whig candidate was elected by a majority of 
1,511 votes, nearly six hundred more than Clay's 
two years before. Of Illinois' delegation of seven 
Congressmen, Lincoln was the only Whig, and 
it was not for some time that his party was again 
to carry the district, for his fearless course in op- 
posing the President's aggressions which were 
responsible for the Mexican War, resulted in a 
Democratic triumph when, in 1848, it was Logan's 
turn to enjoy the honor. 

Although in accord in no manner with the war 
of offense to extend slave territory conducted 
against Mexico, Lincoln voted money for the prose- 
cution of the military campaigns, once they had 
been undertaken, and with Alexander Stephens 
and other Whigs in Congress, formed a club called 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 65 

the "Young Indians," to promote the nomination 
and election of Zachary Taylor, who came out oi 
the affair the inevitable candidate for the presi- 
dency. Lincoln foreseeing only defeat for Clay, 
were he renominated, discouraged the movement to 
bring forward the Kentuckian a second time, and 
while not a delegate was present at the Whig na- 
tional convention in Philadelphia. He was confi- 
dent of Taylor's election. "One unmistakable 
sign," he wrote to Archibald Williams immediately 
after the adjournment of the nominating body, " is 
that all the odds and ends are with us — Barnburn- 
ers, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed 
office-seeking Locofocos and the Lord knows 
what." 1 He urged his partner Herndon to organ- 
ize a club of young men in Springfield, naming 
those whom he thought could best direct it in the 
hope of capturing Illinois for "Old Zach." He 
wished every one to take the part he could play 
best — "some speak, some sing and all < holler.' " 2 

After Congress adjourned in August, 1848, Lin- 
coln spoke in many states for "Old Rough." He 
went first to New York and then visited New Eng- 
land, returning to Illinois in the autumn where he 
was actively engaged upon the stump until the end 
of the campaign. While the western course of 
civilization had effected an important social revo- 
lution in Illinois, campaigning was still very largely 
a muscular enterprise. It required the ability to 

Lincoln, "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 122. 
9 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 132. 



6G ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

maintain order in your audiences, to reply off-hand 
to interjected remarks by rowdies bent upon a dis- 
turbance of the peace, to use freely a body of rude 
anecdote, of which probably no man ever had a 
more abundant store than Abraham Lincoln. Id 
one of his legislative campaigns he is said to have 
descended from the platform in the midst of his 
speech to quell an incipient riot, throwing a bully 
twelve feet on the turf. Indeed the employment of 
his long sinewy frame in the .physical argument 
which inevitably accompanied the intellectual on 
the rude hustings of early Illinois, was a very com- 
mon thing, and this factor was no small agency at 
such a time in impressing his opinions upon the 
popular body. In the court-room in Springfield 
during one exciting campaign Baker might have 
come to serious harm had it not been for his friend 
Lincoln's timely appearance on the scene. On the 
second floor of the building in which the meeting 
was held, Stuart and Lincoln had their law office, 
and Lincoln, as he was wont to do on such occa- 
sions, listened at a trap-door that opened directly 
above the platform. Baker, warming up to his 
subject, indulged in a severe arraignment of the 
Democratic party, whereupon the crowd rose from 
its feet to pull him from the speaker's stand. At 
the ripe moment Lincoln's legs dangled from the 
ceiling and he fell upon the platform in the midst 
of confusion to raise his voice in defense of the 
right of free speech, a principle, however, for 
which the mob cared vastly less than Lincoln's 



BENEDICK AKI) LAWYER 67 

threatening mien, and the great stone water pitcher 
which he seized from the table and held in his hand 
for use against the first invader of the rostrum. 
The orator with such support was allowed to pro- 
ceed with his speech. 

Lincoln from his youth was obstreperous game 
for those who considered him a mark for ridicule. 
No man ever met him fairly on open ground who 
was not made to repent of his temerity in initiating 
the attack. In one campaign a Democrat nami'd 
Taylor, inconsistently dressed as a dandy from tip 
to toe, was much given to denunciation of the lordly 
ways of the Whig party. One day he rashly ac- 
cused Lincoln of aristocratic sympathies and con- 
nections with unexpected results. The latter 
slipped up to the speaker, mischievously pulled 
open his vest and exhibited his ruffled shirt front 
studded with jewelry, addressing some remarks to 
the crowd at the same time which set it into laugh- 
ter. The demagogue had been revealed and the 
uncouth Lincoln in his ill-fitting garments was now 
able to stand beside the dumbfounded and angry 
Taylor, appealing to the people to decide which of 
them was the truer democrat. 

It was perhaps Lincoln's first appearance in 
Springfield, and his speech which Speed who had 
just come up from Kentucky said was as fine as 
anything he had heard from the famous orators of 
that state. Lincoln made so deep an impression 
indeed that a well-known lawyer, George Forquer, 
who had earlier been a Whig but who upon chang- 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

iug his politics was appointed Register of the Laud 
Office, noted in all that neighborhood as the only 
man who had fitted his house with a newly-invented 
rod to protect it from lightning, rose to take the 
wind out of the young man's sails. Lincoln stand- 
ing with arms folded listened until Forquer was 
done when speaking deliberately he said: "The 
gentleman commenced his speech by saying that 
this young man will have to be taken down and he 
was sorry that the task devolved upon him. I am 
not so young in years as I am in the tricks and 
trades of a politician but, live long or die young, I 
would rather die now than like the gentleman 
change my politics and simultaneously with the 
change receive an office worth $3,000 a year and 
then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house to 
protect a guilty conscience from an offended God. ' ' 
So successful was this rejoinder that Lincoln was 
carried from the platform on the shoulders of his 
friends. 

Lincoln, known as " Honest Abe" from the time 
he had been a storekeeper in New Salem, strength- 
ened his claim to this title by the well-known mod- 
eration of his charges as a lawyer. When his 
sympathies were appealed to and he knew that his 
clients could not well afford the expense of the liti- 
gation which circumstances had forced upon them, 
his fees were very light. So greatly did he lean to 
the side of mercy in his business dealings at the 
bar that his fellow lawyers not unfrequently took 
him to task for a practice which they said demoral- 



BENEDICK AND LAWYEE 69 

ized the entire profession. He defended without 
charge the son of his old friend Jack Armstrong, 
the wrestler of Clary's Grove, held for homicide 
and cleared the boy by distributing almanacs to the 
jurymen to upset the testimony of a witness who 
had sworn that he had seen the deed committed in 
the glare of a full moon. The almanac showed 
clearly that the murder had been done in the dark 
of the moon. 

He performed a similar service quite gratuitously 
for Mr. Linder whose son was accused of the same 
crime, and who had sought Lincoln's assistance in 
trying the case in a district in which he was re- 
garded as a u tower of strength. ' ' Lincoln replied 
that no engagement would be allowed to interfere 
with his care of the case and to the offer of a fee 
replied that he knew of no act of his in his previous 
life which would justify the supposition that he 
would "take money from a friend for assisting in 
the defense of a child." 

Long " Honest Abe," he now came to be known 
as " Old Abe." When little more than thirty, peo- 
ple on the street as he passed them remarked to 
each other, "There goes Old Abe," and, "There 
goes old Mr. Lincoln." Lincoln's tall frame 
wrapped in a shawl, a market-basket on one arm 
and a little boy holding fast to the other in an ef- 
fort to keep up with him was a familiar sight in 
Springfield as he dreamily strided of a winter's 
morning through the streets. He still achieved no 
great success in the accumulation of a fortune. 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Just prior to Lis marriage to Miss Todd he wrote 
to his friend Speed : "I amso poor and make so 
little headway in the world that I drop back in a 
month of idleness as much as I gain in a year's 
sowing." 

If we believe his partner, Herndon, Lincoln 
never had " money sense." He knew little of fi- 
nance for the state and nation, as is evidenced for 
example by his record in the legislature of Illinois. 
He had little genius in directing his own household 
and his office was in a proverbial state of disorder. 
For his services in the Black Hawk War he had 
secured a land warrant which he entered on a tract 
in Iowa, opposite the present city of Omaha. He 
had the frame cottage in Springfield in which he 
resided until his departure for the White House, 
but the acquisitive quality was not his. Though in 
youth a surveyor like Washington, he unlike Wash- 
ington did not become a landowner, viewing with 
a planter's pride the extension of his acres. He 
had none of the avidity of that Western farmer of 
whom he sometimes told a story : "I am not greedy 
about land," said the man. "I only want what 
jines mine." His friends and partners were pur- 
chasing quarter sections and town lots which in- 
creased in value magically, while he, a man of 
fifty, for twenty-five years a leading politician of 
Illinois and one of her prominent barristers, still 
prospered very moderately. 

/ His ambitions were not great. In New York 
City, in 1860, when he came east to deliver his 



BENEDICK AND LAWYER 71 

famous address at the Cooper Institute he unex- 
pectedly met an old friend from Illinois who asked 
him how he had fared in the world. " Oh, very 
well/' Lincoln is said to have replied. "I have 
the cottage at (Springfield and about $8,000 in 
money. If they make me Vice President with 
Seward, as some say they will, I hope I shall be 
able to increase it to $20,000 and that is as much as 
any man ought to want." .This in truth was a 
complete inventory of Lincoln's worldly possessions 
when he exchanged the capital of Illinois for the 
capital of the United States as the theatre of his 
life. To riches he did not aspire and tastes which 
are the spur to thrift were not present to impel him 
to put forth great effort for their satisfaction. 

When Mr. Lincoln's term in Congress had ended 
and he had assisted by means of many good speeches 
in elevating " Old Zach" to the Presidency, the 
tempter came to suggest a reward for his services. 
Lincoln was wont to speak of office-seekers when he 
came to the White House as men who sought to 
"live without work." Whether this was his view 
of the subject in 1849 or not we are without means 
of knowing very accurately. The life of Wash- 
ington, now that he had had a taste of it, had its 
allurements, especially for Mrs. Lincoln, who for a 
part of the time with her children was his com- 
panion at the national capital. Some of his friends 
in Illinois, scarcely without his approval, pleaded 
his cause as an applicant for the commissionership of 
the General Land Office, a mere bureau desk in the 



72 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Interior Department, but at this period as large a 
plum as usually fell into the lap of the West, He 
was unfortunate enough to have taken up a posi- 
tion as sponsor for another applicant, but the 
latter' s claims were adjusted to general satisfaction 
and Lincoln might have become a bureaucrat, his 
genius harried with clerkly duties and his future 
endangered as the nation's man of the hour in 
1860, the figure around whom the North and 
West could rally in the nation's critical years, but 
that Daniel Webster cast the weight of his in- 
fluence on the side of Justin Butterfield whom 
Lincoln called " an old drone," l a lawyer of Chicago 
who had performed no valuable service for the 
party. When the Land Office was taken out of 
his reach a consolation prize was offered him in the 
shape of the secretaryship or governorship of 
Oregon where it was argued he might find a 
wide field for the gratification of his political 
ambitions, since he would almost certainly be re- 
turned in a little while as one of the new state's 
senators. Mrs. Lincoln vetoed the suggestion, as 
she did another, which seems to have been 
seriously debated, that he should settle in Chicago 
as a domain of greater future promise in the 
practice of the law. In Springfield Lincoln was to 
remain until the Eepublic called him to his 
destined place. 

1 "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 157. 



CHAPTER III 

HIS ENTRY INTO THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 

It is often said that Lincoln's aversion to slavery 
was indigenous to Ms nature, but so much pane- 
gyric has been indulged in on this point in view 
of what later occurred in the general emancipation 
of the negroes, a deal of it most obviously 
gratuitous, that some care must be exercised by the 
historian who would avoid the pitfalls which are 
prepared for him at every stage of the way. In 
New Orleans, which he had visited on the flatboat 
in 1831, Lincoln saw slaves in the market-place for 
the first time in his life. Then and there, his 
companion John Hanks has said, human bondage 
ran its iron into him and his antagonism to the 
system was unremitting until he reached the posi- 
tion when he could strike the shackles from every 
slave on American soil. He had written to 
Speed's sister after his return by steamboat from 
his visit to Kentucky, remarking upon a sight 
which during the journey had impressed him most 
unhappily. On board were twelve negroes being 
taken by a planter, who had just purchased them, 
to his home in the south. " They were chained six 
and six together," Lincoln writes. " A small iron 
clevis was around the left wrist of each and this 
fastened to the main chain by a shorter one at a 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

convenient distance from the others so that the 
negroes were strnng together precisely like so 
many fish npon a trot-line. In this condition they 
were being separated forever from the scenes of 
their childhood, their friends, their fathers and 
mothers and brothers and sisters and many of them 
from their wives and children, and going into per- 
petual slavery where the lash of the master is pro- 
verbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any 
other where. ' ' Fourteen years later Lincoln wrote 
to Speed alluding to this spectacle still pictured 
upon his mind : ' ' That sight was a continued 
torment to me and I see something like it every time 
I touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is 
not fair for you to assume,' 7 he adds, "that I have 
no interest in a thing which has and continually ex- 
ercises the power of niakiug me miserable." 

Nevertheless Lincoln was far from giving him- 
self great concern about this thing which caused 
him misery and torment. There were many men 
who by word and pen and ballot openly espoused 
the cause of the slave and sought by every available 
method according to the measure of their gifts to 
arouse the nation to a sense of the magnitude 
of the wrong. Conscientious and fearless people 
were defying the laws of their country in helping 
fugitives northward on the way to freedom and 
the din of mighty struggle fell on many ears while 
Lincoln's energies were beiDg expended in an 
effort to prolong the useless days of the Whig party. 
He had never had an idea upon the subject of 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 75 

slavery he declared which was not derived from 
Henry Clay. But it is to be hoped, and his friends 
know, that while the sounding utterances of 
" Harry of the West," were insincere, his were 
sincere ; while Clay condemned slavery though he 
continued to own slaves, Lincoln owned no human 
property and could not have done so without an 
overturning of the entire fabric of his morality. 

In 1837, Lincoln with Dan Stone, another of the 
"Long Nine" in the Illinois legislature, put him- 
self on record for the first time in a public way on 
the great slavery question. These two men joined 
in a protest against resolutions which had been 
passed by their fellow assemblymen in condem- 
nation of the propagation of Abolition doctrines in 
Illinois. The protest, upon a candid reading to- 
day, little reflects the aroused conscience of its 
authors. It declares that the efforts of the Aboli- 
tionists tend rather to increase than to abate the 
evils of slavery, that Congress lacks the power to 
interfere with the institution in the states and that 
while it might do so in the District of Columbia 
this step should be taken only at the request of the 
people of the District. 

In Congress, while he opposed the Mexican War 
as unnecessary and unconstitutional and distin- 
guished himself in rather free denunciations of the 
President, by whom it was provoked, the occasion 
was not embraced for a statement of his principles 
upon the slavery question. It is an ungrateful task, 
as many have learned to their peculiar sorrow in 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

democracies, to oppose the progress of any move- 
ment having for its object the extension of the 
national domain. Lincoln, still given to the florid 
rhetoric so popular with western audiences, accused 
Polk of an attempt to escape scrutiny for his acts 
"by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding 
brightness of military glory, that attractive rain- 
bow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's 
eye that charms but to destroy," and was hard 
pressed to justify his course to his constituents 
when the mails carried them an account of his 
unusual behavior as their representative. But the 
important part which the Mexican War, by the 
annexation of territory, was to play in the develop- 
ment of the great crisis between the sections was 
not yet foreseen, and Lincoln's opposition to that 
ungodly conflict was governed less by his con- 
victions upon slavery than by sentiments of a more 
general nature. He spent his two years in Con- 
gress with no other reward from the Abolitionists 
for his services on the slavery question than their 
outspoken maledictions. So small a value did they 
set upon anything which he had done up to that 
time to make less heinous the evil which they were 
combatting day and night with all their hearts and 
souls, if unwisely at any rate always with admirable 
honesty, that when Lincoln came forward as the 
Republican candidate for the presidency Wendell 
Phillips had no better name for him than ' ' that 
slave hound of Illinois." Such a title Phillips be- 
lieved might properly be bestowed upon the Re- 



THE ANTI SLAVERY CONFLICT 77 

publican nominee because of his course while in 
Congress on the subject of slavery in the District 
of Columbia. To see men offer slaves for sale on 
the capitol steps and traffic in human bodies 
within the shadow of the great building in which 
the delegates of the American nation met was a 
terrible offense to the Abolitionists and they neg- 
lected no opportunity to urge upon Congress the 
prohibition of the trade. 

It was a fact, as Lincoln observed in 1854, that 
for fifty years there had been in view from the 
windows of the capitol "a sort of negro livery- 
stable, where droves of negroes were collected, 
temporarily kept and finally taken to Southern 
markets precisely like droves of horses. " The 
right of the Federal government to enter a state 
and interfere with a local institution might not be 
admissible until the constitution of the United 
States should be amended in that sense, but the 
right to regulate a municipal affair in the District of 
Columbia was unqualified and it was the duty of 
Congress to drive this iniquity out of national ter- 
ritory without more delay. 

The measure for which the Abolitionists criti- 
cised Lincoln so unsparingly was a cautiously 
worded resolution which had been submitted for 
their scrutiny and approval to several anti-slavery 
leaders as well as to a few Southern Congressmen. 
Having grievously disappointed the radicals by 
voting with only three other Northern Whigs to 
lay on the table a resolution with a similar end in 






78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

view, framed in unconditional terms with an in- 
tended sting for the South, Lincoln's measure was 
brought forward in January, 1849, in the form of 
imperative instructions to the House Committee on 
the District of Columbia. His substitute asked 
that the committee report a bill prohibiting any 
slaves not already in the District from entering it, 
except they be the necessary servants of officers of 
the government coming to the capital of their 
country from slave-holding states ; making free the 
children of slave mothers born after New Year's 
day, 1850, the owners of the mothers being obli- 
gated to bring up the offspring under a system of 
apprenticeship ; and introducing the machinery 
whereby slaves residing in Washington or George- 
town should at the will of the owners have 
their value appraised by a board consisting of the 
President of the United States, the Secretary of 
State and the Secretary of the Treasury, when the 
master might receive an order on the Treasury of 
the United States and the slave a certificate of free- 
dom. Fugitives seeking cover in the capital were 
to be returned to their Southern owners. No pro- 
vision of the law should become effective unless it 
were approved by the citizens of the District in one 
of those referenda which popular servants in 
America so freely prescribe when confronted by 
difficult issues, for deciding which they desire to 
escape their fair portion of responsibility and pos- 
sible blame. 

In our present view of the slavery question, 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 79 

coming from the man who emancipated the black 
race in America, this measure seems as mild as it 
did to Phillips, Garrison and their uncompromising 
allies. No man is a hero to his valet, and it is also 
doubtful whether he can ever stand in this relation 
to his business partner. What led Lincoln forward 
constantly, says Mr. Herndon, was his ambition, 
" a little engine that knew no rest," ' which strove 
not for riches or the objects that rivet some men's 
gaze, but for political advancement. When the 
last word is spoken and the final estimate is pro- 
nounced upon Abraham Lincoln, it will be found 
that his wonderful skill and sagacity in under- 
standing the people, and his willingness and con- 
tent to keep with them while reformers went far 
beyond and philosophers preached over their heads 
gave him the success that he so ardently craved. 
It was his caution in calculating the effect of each 
movement in his relation to the men about him that 
at length made him the unmatched leader of a 
democratic nation, one who not faster than the 
people gave expression to their already awakening, 
if not already actively aroused convictions upon 
great public questions. If he liked slavery not less 
than the Abolitionists, he kept his hates to himself ; 
advocated his resolution for the gradual extinction 
of the evil in the District of Columbia, but wasted 
no tears unnecessarily when his measure failed 
through the angry antagonism of the South 5 re- 
turned from Congress after voting forty-two times, 
1 Herndon, p. 375. 



80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he used to say, for the Wilniot Proviso, consistently 
opposed as he always was to the extension of slavery 
in new ground ; resumed his place on the circuit 
trying cases, relating anecdotes, reading some 
Abolitionist tracts which Mr. Herndon threw in his 
way in the law office ; pronouncing a eulogy over 
Henry Clay in the State House in Springfield, but 
in general playing a smaller part in the public eye 
than at any time in his life since the Black Hawk 
War. He was not inactive in the Whig behalf in 
the campaign of General Scott in 1852, but it was a 
perfunctory service in which he manifested no per- 
sonal delight. 

The time was ripening and through the act of a 
senator of Illinois the theatre of the great contest 
was appropriately found in Lincoln's state, the 
year 1854 witnessing the commencement of the in- 
tellectual struggle which led inevitably to the Civil 
War— the final ascendancy of a long disputed view 
of the American Constitution and the nature of the 
government which had been established under it, 
and the emancipation of the slaves. From this 
time forward Lincoln's repute was steadily cumu- 
lative and whatever his failures and mistakes in the 
past he made no false step henceforward. 

The course of history swept on irresistibly but 
the future was not foreseen, though Lincoln's elec- 
tion lay but six, the firing upon Fort Sumter but 
seven, the surrender of Lee and the suppression of 
the South' s attempt at secession only eleven years 
away. In retrospect the way seems as straight and 




THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 81 

clear as the line on a surveyor' s chart. But even at a 
much later date, when war between the sections had 
actually begun, the abolition of slavery was not one 
of its certain consequences. It is a truth, of which 
it is well to be reminded frequently, that "there 
was no time between the day that Sumter was fired 
upon in April, 1861, until the first of January, 
1863, when the South could not have returned to 
the Union with every right of slavery maintained 
and recognized." ' 

Intelligent men North and South in 1854 knew 
only that the issue was being more closely drawn 
between the sections. In the South it was under- 
stood with a deepening sense that the North, strong 
with free labor, reenforced with immigration from 
Europe to the rich farming and mineral lands 
which were attracting multitudes to the west and 
northwest, was gaining vastly in political power. 
This advantage when put into the balance would 
soon outweigh the indomitable spirit, the vigilance 
and intellectual agility with which the Southern 
leaders had guarded for a generation their interests 
in this sectional contest. The South felt itself a 
thing at bay while the North, especially in that 
quarter in which the "New England conscience" 
was felt and obeyed, aware of its growing advan- 
tage pressed the moral issue at every point. In 1850 
with all the skill that Clay and the old masters in 
compromise could bring to the work the question, 
it was fondly believed, had been put to its final 
1 McClure, ''Recollections," p. 4oU 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

rest. The North secured California as a free state, 
while New Mexico and Utah were organized as ter- 
ritories continuing the Mexican laws in reference to 
slavery. The domestic slave trade was prohibited 
in the District of Columbia. Texas was presented 
with ten millions of dollars for the adjustment of 
her boundaries and a fugitive slave law with savage 
penalties aimed at the station masters on the Under- 
ground Railroad and other aiders and abettors of 
the slave's aspirations for liberty, left all but the 
Abolitionists in the North and a few hotspurs in the 
South in a state of fancied security for the future. 
The statesmen of the day congratulated themselves 
upon the success of their last grand essay in do- 
mestic diplomacy, and the leaders of the first half 
of the century laid oif their mantles happy in the 
conviction that the issue would rise no more to dis- 
turb the peace of America. It is true there were 
some to whom solace could not be administered so 
easily. One skeptic expressed his doubts through 
the medium of verse in a newspaper : 

11 To kill twice dead a rattlesnake 
And off his scaly skin to take, 
And through his head to drive a stake, 
And every hone within him break, 
And of his flesh mince-meat to make ; 
To burn, to sear, to boil and bake, 
Then in a heap the whole to rake, 
And over it the besom shake, 
And sink it fathoms in the lake, 
Whence after all quite wide awake 
Comes back that very same old snake." 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 83 

The spirit of this poetaster's muse entered Mr. E. 
C. Stedman, who when John Brown was awaiting 
the hangman in Virginia, suggested that 

"Old Brown, 
Ossawattomie Brown 
May trouble you more than ever when you nail his coffin 

down." 

The same spirit a little later took a somewhat 
different form in the jiggish song which became the 
North's " Marseillaise" : 

" John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave 
His soul is marching on." 

The "soul" of this cause lived through every 
crucifying experience. The issue could not be put 
down by all the pacificators great and little of 1850, 
a fact made abundantly clear four years later or as 
soon as Stephen A. Douglas by a discreditable bar- 
gain in the Senate of the United States, placed 
himself on the side of the South in an effort to re- 
open the slavery question and carry it into the ter- 
ritories. Since 1820 no one had suggested that 
slavery should ever exist north of 36° 30', except in 
Missouri. The compromise of that year was re- 
garded in the North as practically a part of the 
Constitution, inviolable, described by Douglas him- 
self only five years before as being "canonized in 
the hearts of the American people as a sacred 
thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reck- 



84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

less enough to disturb." 2 The subdivision of the 
" Platte Country" into territories which would be 
candidates in no long time for statehood, again 
aroused the anxiety of the pro -slavery leaders who 
saw in that direction a further dangerous weaken- 
ing of their position in reference to the North, and 
Douglas became their instrument. He devised, 
proclaimed and skilfully advocated a new princi- 
ple which he may have honestly thought would be 
the means of maintaining peace between the two 
sections. 

Whether sincerely meant or not a remarkable 
variety of intellectual acrobatics must soon be in- 
dulged in to prove the merit of his new attitude to 
the people of Illinois and the other northern states. 
He had begun badly. He had declared the Mis- 
souri Compromise i ' inoperative and void ' ? and or- 
ganized the two new territories of Kansas and 
Nebraska by a bill which passed Congress in May, 
1854, under a system of " popular sovereignty." 
It was another instance in which the statesman 
sought to escape the pains and penalties of his un- 
popular deeds by shifting the responsibility to the 
citizens. The people of any territory or state, he 
argued with persuasiveness and unction, should 
themselves be the judges whether the slaveholder 
and the slave should live among them. For Con- 
gress to determine a matter of municipal right was 
a grand supererogation of authority which was not 
justified by any principle of 1m w or morality. I f the 
1 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. I, p. 351. 



THE ANTI-SLAVEBY CONFLICT 85 

people of Kansas or Nebraska desired to prohibit 
slavery withiu their borders the agency was at hand 
and they might do so without let or hindrance from 
the outside. 

The passage of this bill repealing the Missouri 
Compromise and opening to the slave masters what 
was securely accounted free territory, the announce- 
ment of the new system of popular sovereignty by 
which in the whim of a moment at the polling 
place, Illinois itself, and even New York and New 
England, might be converted into slave ground 
swept the North with amazement which soon de- 
veloped into furious indignation. Whigs and Dem- 
ocrats of anti-slavery sentiments who had long 
resisted the appeals of the Abolition leaders for 
separate political action quickly organized them- 
selves into a new party for the Congressional and 
state elections. In some states they immediately 
assumed the name Eepublican ; everywhere they 
were known as " Anti- Nebraska men," opposed 
absolutely and unreservedly to the scheme by 
which the South hoped to seize Kansas, while its 
friend Douglas, with plausible and adroit oratory, 
soothed the outraged conscience of the North with 
his encomiums of his new discovery— as old as plebi- 
scites, referenda, primary assemblies and other de- 
vices for direct government in democracies — " pop- 
ular sovereignty." 

Abraham Lincoln, who for five years had lived a 
life almost altogether apart from politics, was on 
his feet again and raised his voice in no uncertain 



86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tone throughout this exciting canvass. Once more 
the people were confronted by an issue, the greatest 
he had been called upon to represent. Among all 
the Anti-Nebraska men in Illinois he, by common 
consent, was the one best qualified to meet Douglas 
on his return to the state, for a vindication of his 
remarkable course. Since Lincoln first met him in 
the Illinois legislature he had occupied several 
state offices, had sat for three terms in the lower 
house of Congress, and was well advanced in his 
second term in the United States Senate, having 
therefore appreciably outdistanced the orator who 
was to contest the ground with him in intellectual 
combat. He had been handsomely supported by a 
number of delegates for the Democratic nomination 
for the Presidency in 1852, and was looked upon as 
the champion of ' ' Young America. ' ' As the ' ' New 
Democrat" and the " Little Giant," his friends 
heralded him far and wide and seemed sincerely to 
regard him as the great man of his time. 

He reached his native state late in August, and 
on the first day of September made his first public 
appearance upon the platform in Chicago, which 
was now his home. That city was strongly anti- 
slavery, and therefore pronouncedly hostile to the 
Kansas conspiracy. It was in the Southern part 
of the state called " Egypt," that Douglas's friends 
in his new role thickly abided, and he was brought 
face to face at once with what was very probably 
the least agreeable experience in his long career as 
a popular campaigner. The mayor of the city pre- 






THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 87 

sided, but the crowd, after listening for a time in 
patience, began to hurl questions at the speaker 
and shouts and jeers soon converted the meeting 
into a pandemonium. Interruption was something 
that Douglas could never brook good-naturedly. 
Made testy and arrogant by public attention and 
flattery, generously accorded him on all sides for 
many years, he appeared at a grave disadvantage 
under such circumstances. The meeting came to 
an end with the " Little Giant " shaking his fist at 
the audience which he denounced as a mob, and he 
was left to better the impression his change of po- 
litical front had created by a tour through the 
southern portions of the state. 

When he was asked to play this ungrateful part 
with reference to the Missouri Compromise, in the 
presence of a Southern senator in Washington, he 
hesitated on the ground that his action would sub- 
ject him to many indignities. " Every opprobrious 
epithet will be applied to me," he said. u I shall 
probably be hung in effigy in many places. It is 
more than probable that I may become permanently 
odious among those whose friendship and esteem I 
have heretofore possessed." This prophecy must 
have been forcibly recalled at the Chicago meeting, 
as at other times in the course of this stirring cam- 
paign. 

Early in October he was brought face to face 
with Abraham Lincoln at the State Fair in Spring- 
field. An audience drawn from all parts of Illinois 
packed the State House to hear Douglas present his 



88 ABRAHAM LIKCOLN 

case in a lengthy speech, to which, on the following 
day, in the same hall to no smaller an assemblage, 
Lincoln addressed a reply. For four hours the 
Springfield lawyer's audience closely followed his 
argument. He unfolded the theme and de- 
scribed the great issue with more skill and ability 
than even his closest friends believed to be latent 
in him. He had perfected himself during the 
summer in the history of the slavery question, and 
with many appeals to law and precedent he riddled 
the mass of sophistry which Senator Douglas offered 
as a defense to his constituents for his radical change 
of policy. There were warm, but for the most part 
good-humored passages between Lincoln and Doug- 
las as the afternoon progressed. The readiness of 
their leader's wit in running debate, and his uni- 
formly equable temper, even under provoking cir- 
cumstances, were now as in his future debates, a 
source of admiration to all of Mr. Lincoln's adher- 
ents and it was this quality, with the wealth and 
intimacy of the historical knowledge he brought to 
bear upon the discussion, helped on by the confi- 
dence always present in the fundamental righteous- 
ness of his cause, which elevated him for one of the 
most conspicuous services iu the annals of states- 
manship in this country. 

Douglas's rejoinder is said by those who were 
present at the first of these remarkable debates 
(to be heard by national audiences when they were 
resumed in 1858) to have been unconvincing. He 
came out of the encounter the worse for this ventila- 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 89 

tion of liis doctrines, but the public a fortnight later 
was to enjoy another meeting of the champions in 
another part of the state — at Peoria. To a vast 
audience Douglas had spoken for upwards of three 
hours and when it was time for Lincoln to be heard it 
was almost the supper hour, whereupon with the 
statement that his argument would not be less 
lengthy than Judge Douglas's, he asked the people to 
repair to their provision baskets and restaurants to 
reassemble again in the evening and hear the exposi- 
tion of the other side of the question. Lincoln, 
while following the outlines of his speech at Spring- 
field, materially improved upon that effort. He 
regarded the Peoria address in after years as in 
many respects the ablest he had ever made, and 
since by good fortune it has been preserved in its 
entirety it can be enjoyed by later generations. 
There is infinitely more learning compressed 
into this speech in clear cut phrase and dignified 
language than in any made previously by Mr. 
Lincoln, and it will not suffer by comparison with 
his discourses in 1858. The reserve which is lack- 
ing in some of the addresses delivered after he had 
gained greater familiarity with his subject adds to 
its quality, and while it contains none of the catch 
phrases that were to become the bywords of 
popular speech, it leaves as a whole a deeper 
impression upon the reasoning mind than any 
contribution of the year to the literature of the 
slavery question. 
The value of Lincoln's services on the stump 



90 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

against Douglas in this campaign does not appear 
the less when we realize that he was a candidate for 
the seat in the United States Senate, soon to be 
vacated by his old challenger to the duel, James 
Shields. The Democrats had much at stake and 
Lincoln, the astute politician that he always was, 
had nicely calculated that his meetings with 
Douglas would make him the inevitable Anti- 
Nebraska candidate in the Legislature. His argu- 
ment, unlike the Abolitionists', was not given up to 
a recital of the cruelties of slavery ; it was a legal 
arraignment of Douglas and his party for violating 
the pledge of the Compromise and for opening the 
way for the extension of the evil into new ground. 
He weighed his sentences carefully and little was 
said which could be used against him to incite the 
prejudices of those for whom Abolition was the 
most hateful of all English words. He did not 
hold the Southern people responsible for the origin 
of slavery, nor did he suggest a plan whereby they 
might soon rid themselves of it, although it was his 
belief, said he, that by this time they might have 
been able to devise some system of gradual emanci- 
pation. Passages that rung like these could leave 
no doubt as to the sympathies of Lincoln's heart in 
the stupendous contest which had already begun : 
"The declared indifference but as I think covert 
zeal for the spread of slavery I cannot but hate. I 
hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery 
itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican 
example of its just influence in the world ; enables 



THE ANTI SLAVERY CONFLICT 91 

the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to 
taunt us as hyprocrites ; causes the real friends of 
freedom to doubt our sincerity : and especially be- 
cause it forces so many good men among ourselves 
into an open war with the very fundamental princi- 
ples of civil liberty, criticisiug the Declaration of 
Independence and insisting that there is no right 
principle of action but self-interest." 

But Lincoln was far too much of a candidate to 
carry his moral advantage to any indiscreet length. 
He drove out of town in a buggy to escape a meet- 
ing with some radical leaders who sought to bring 
him forward as an Abolitionist, he listened and 
agreed to Douglas's proposition that they should 
both go home speaking no more after the debate at 
Peoria during that campaign and wrote personal 
letters to his friends asking them to support him 
for the senatorship. "You are a member of the 
legislature and have a vote to give," he wrote to 
T. J. Henderson. " Think it over and see 
whether you can do better than go for me." 1 He 
protested against the placing of his name on Owen 
Lovejoy's new Republican state committee as an 
unauthorized act and called himself still a Whig. 

Lincoln had again been chosen to a seat in the 
legislature in the election of 1854. He had not been 
a member of that body since 1842. He had been 
nominated by the Whigs and also by the Know Noth- 
ings, a committee of whom waited upon him to ac- 
quaint him of their endorsement of his candidacy. 

1 Lincoln, " Speeches,'- Vol. I, p. 209. 



92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Their visit soon ended. "Who are the native 
Americans ? ' ' asked Lincoln pointedly. i ' Do they 
not wear the breech clout and carry the tomahawk ? 
We pushed them from their homes and now turn 
upon others not fortunate enough to come over 
here so early as we or our forefathers. Gentlemen 
of the committee your party is wrong in principle. ' ' 
He then told them a story : "I had some time ago 
an Irishman named Patrick cultivating my garden. 
One morning I went out to see how he was getting 
on. i Mr. Lincoln, what do yez think of these Know 
Nothings % ' he inquired of me. I explained what 
they were ^trying to do and asked Pat why he had 
not been born in America. i Faith,' he replied, ' I 
wanted to but me mother wouldn't let me.' " With 
this characteristic anecdote the delegation took its 
departure. l In spite of his rejection of Know 
Nothing support he was elected as one of the 
representatives from Sangamon County by a 
majority of about 650 votes. 

It was clear that if he were to be a candidate for 
United States senator he must resign his seat in the 
legislature, which as luck would have it was nar- 
rowly Anti -Nebraska. This he did, relying upon 
his majority as an assurance of the choice of a 
Whig to succeed him at the by-election. But the 
Democrats, by some means never fully explained, 
captured the district. This unforeseen result 
further reduced the majority, though the prize 
would still have been his but for the obstinacy of 
1 Iowa Historical Records for 1896, p. 497, 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 93 

five anti-slavery members of Democratic ante 
cedents who would on no account vote for a Whig. 
They were casting their votes steadfast 1 v for Lyman 
Trumbull, a Democrat upon every subject but the 
slavery issue. Lincoln, on the tenth ballot, after a 
formidable show of strength, rather than see the 
office go to a Nebraska man recommended his 
followers to support Mr. Trumbull, which they did, 
thus electing him as Douglas's colleague at Wash- 
ington. 

Lincoln now very clearly foresaw that he must 
make his adieus to the Whig party, which was in the 
stages of its final dissolution, and find new political 
affiliations. To say that he was a leader in this 
movement would be to commit a great mistake, since 
he had always discouraged everything that savored 
of haste. At every point now until his career came 
to its untimely end he held himself in reserve, 
coming forward to speak and act only when he was 
fully satisfied that a strong body of public opinion 
was ready to lend support to his movements. Scouts 
were manoeuvring in advance, and he surveyed their 
operations with a diligent eye, but however much 
his own feelings pressed for hard words and radical 
measures he bit his lips, to use his own language, 
and kept quiet. 1 

In the summer of 1855 he was so far behind the 
advance column that he seemed to be a man with- 
out a party. Douglas's principle of popular sov- 
ereignty had proven to be precisely what the Anti- 
1 Lincoln, '-Speeches," Vol. I, p. 216. 



94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Nebraska men anticipated, " squatter sovereignty." 
The struggle had begun for the possession of Kansas, 
bands of ruffians from Missouri crossing the line, 
where they came into conflict with settlers sent for- 
ward by colonization societies in the free states. 
Some seized upon the fertile and valuable lands 
which were spread out before them ; others roved 
over the country as armed adventurers, burning, 
shooting and pillaging with impunity, the forces 
working for order sent out by President Pierce 
serving only to augment the strife, since they were 
active on the pro-slavery side. The slave system 
was wholly unsuited to the western American 
prairies, a fact which the Southern people were 
slow to understand. The climate was not congenial 
to the negro and the industries to be developed 
were not of a kind in which bond -servants and 
gangs of laborers under overseers could be utilized 
with economic advantage. The failure of the 
struggle from this point forward was absolutely 
certain, foreordained by some power outside the 
range of morals or politics. 

The territorial contest which actually developed 
into civil war disturbed the nation to its centre. 
The more Kansas bled the more determined was 
each party to possess itself of the state or, more 
properly speaking, of her two senators and one or 
two representatives, and the wearisome story of 
outrages at the polls, rump legislatures and con- 
ventions and slave and free state constitutions is the 
only reply posterity will ever require to Douglas's 



THE ANTI SLAVERY CONFLICT 95 

ingenious arguments for the " sovereignty " of the 
people as a method of solving the slavery question. 
The gathering together of the elements to enter their 
protest at the ballot-box against what Sumner called 
"the crime against Kansas," proceeded in every 
Northern state. The Republican party had been 
born in 1854, but Lincoln was still not a republican. 
To Speed he wrote in August, 1855 : " You inquire 
where I now stand. That is a disputed point. 1 
think I am a Whig ; but others say there are no 
Whigs and that I am an Abolitionist. When I 
was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso 
as good as forty times ; and I never heard of any one 
attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no 
more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am 
not a Know Nothing, that is certain. How could I 
be ? How can any one who abhors the oppression 
of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white 
people I Our progress in degeneracy appears to me 
to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by de- 
claring that ' all men are created equal.' We now 
practically read it ' all men are created equal except 
negroes.' When the Know Nothings get control it 
will read ' all men are created equal except negroes 
and foreigners and Catholics. ' When it comes to 
this I shall prefer emigrating to some country 
where they make no pretense of loving liberty." 

The Republican party of Illinois held its first 
state convention of delegates at Bloomington on 
May 29, 1856, in answer to a call which had been 
signed by a number of forward spirits, Lincoln's 



96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

name having been appended in his absence and 
without his authority by his partner, William H. 
Herndon. 1 Although a former partner, Major 
John T. Stuart, predicted that the act would ruin 
the political future of the Springfield leader Lincoln 
did not repudiate the act, attended the convention 
and there made the most radical declarations which 
had yet publicly come from his lips. His speech 
was an eloquent appeal to the people of the state 
to flock to the Eepublicau standard. He asked 
them to 

" Come as the winds come when forests are rended ; 
Come as the waves come when navies are stranded," 

and the audience rising to its feet, cheer following 
upon cheer felt itself baptized in the fires of a new 
moral faith. " His speech," wrote Herndon, who 
was present, and for whose taste Lincoln had been 
showing too much deliberation, "was full of fire 
and energy and force ; it was logic ; it was pathos ; 
it was enthusiasm ; it was justice, equity, truth and 
right set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul mad- 
dened by the wrong ; it was hard, heavy, knotty, 
gnarly, backed with wrath. I attempted for about 
fifteen minutes, as was usual with me then, to take 
notes, but at the end of that time I threw pen and 
paper away and lived only in the inspiration of the 
hour. If Mr. Lincoln was six feet four inches high 
usually, at Bloomington that day he was seven feet 
and inspired at that." * 

1 Herndon, p. 382. 8 Ibid., p. 384. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT 97 

In the campaign which ensued Lincoln was the 
unquestioned leader of his party in Illinois. The 
Republican national convention which assembled in 
Philadelphia in June, nominated John C. Fremont 
for President and denounced slavery as a relic of 
barbarism. For the second place on the ticket Mr. 
Lincoln received the support of 110 delegates, a 
spontaneous tribute which, although it did not 
bring him the nomination for the Vice-Presidency, 
was a national recognition of his abilities and serv- 
ices, and entrenched him still more securely in the 
good opinions of Republicans everywhere. Re- 
quests for speeches reached him from every part of 
his own state ; campaign committees in neighboring 
states called upon him to come and help them. He 
headed the Fremont electoral ticket in Illinois, 
and through the summer and autumn delivered 
more than fifty addresses. He bent his energies 
particularly to the task of reducing the strength 
of Fillmore, and the third party candidates which, 
had it been possible to carry the process a little 
farther, would have placed the state securely on the 
Republican side, as James Buchanan's plurality was 
less than 10,000 votes. 

In one of those strange lapses which are among 
the least comprehensible of the mysteries of Lin- 
coln's character, he during the next two years pro- 
duced little to suggest the brilliant work of the 
past, of 1854 or 1856, or the magnificent service he 
was to perform in the near future. A speech at 
Chicago after Buchanan was elected and another in 



98 ABBAHAM LINCOLN 

Springfield in June, 1857, indicate no advancement 
in thought or improvement in oratorical manner. 
In fact there is in both a marked falling away from 
the dignity and polish marking his earlier de- 
liverances. 

At Galena, during the campaign of 1856, Lincoln, 
in the significant speech in which he had said in 
rebuttal of the charge that the Republicans were 
working for a disruption of the nation, "We do 
not want to dissolve the Union : you shall not/ 7 had 
also let fall a few remarks about the binding force 
of decisions of the Supreme Court. He said : "I 
grant you that an unconstitutional act is not a law ; 
but I do not ask and will not take your construc- 
tion of the constitution. The Supreme Court of the 
United States is the tribunal to decide such a ques- 
tion and we will submit to its decisions; and if you 
do also there will be an end of the matter. Will 
y ou ? If not, who are the disu nioni st s, you or we I " 
It must have been with no little embarrassment 
therefore that in a few months the time came for him 
to reject the authority of the Supreme Court. A few 
days after "Old Buck's" inauguration as Presi- 
dent that tribunal announced its decision in the 
case of Dred Scott and nothing else was needed ex- 
cept ' ' the consent of the governed, ' ' the last resort in 
democracies, to make complete the triumph of Doug- 
las's scheme to cast aside the compromises in favor of 
popular sovereignty. The Supreme Court, with a 
divided bench, it is true, decided that negroes could 
never become citizens of the United States, that 



THE ANTJ SLAVERY CONFLICT 99 

slaves must be regarded as property entitled to 
legal protection as such in every part of the Union, 
and that the Missouri Compromise and similar pro- 
hibitory acts were unconstitutional. What the 
North regarded as a conspiracy and the last card in 
a long-drawn-out game, which, if it failed, would 
induce several states to make good their threat to 
secede from the Union, had involved every one of 
the three departments of government and the ap- 
peal must now be made directly to the nation at 
large. 

Lincoln pinned his faith to the Supreme Court in 
1856 ; it was Douglas's opportunity to submit his 
case to that body's final decision in 1857. The ex- 
citement increased and the Northern people were 
in a veritable furore. Public indignation found 
expression in every public forum, from legislatures 
and newspapers, with their wide audiences, down to 
the smallest village debating society which met in 
the basement of some church or school. The North 
was suddenly driven into the most unhappy posi- 
tion of being compelled to explain why it demanded 
of the South a quiet submission to the acts of the 
regular agencies of government, when it now openly 
resisted the determination of a supreme body, which 
all Americans are wont to regard with peculiar 
veneration. Lincoln was not ready to precipitate 
himself into this discussion until 1858, when the 
time was again at hand for the choice of a United 
States senator. In 1854 he had failed by a very 
narrow margin to make himself Douglas's colleague 






100 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

at Washington ; peculiar interest now attached to 
the undertaking from the fact that he could contest 
Douglas's own seat, and draw the issue directly with 
the idol of the Democracy reincarnated with the 
spirit of popular sovereignty. 

In April, the Democrats in their state convention 
endorsed Senator Douglas's political course, and 
made him their candidate for reelection. In June, 
the Republican state convention resolved "that 
Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of 
the Republicans of Illinois for the United States 
Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas. 7 ' 
It is an error to suppose that Lincoln did not an- 
ticipate this nomination, and did not exert his influ- 
ence, in so far as his personal intervention was 
needed to bring it about. He prepared his speech 
most carefully in writing, and memorized it. It 
was with particular deliberation and the nice bal- 
ancing of the good and bad consequences that he 
prepared the opening passages which soon became 
household words, drawing to him in counsel a num- 
ber of his friends who seem pretty generally to have 
discouraged the utterance. Already on August 15, 
1855, he had written to George Robertson of Ken- 
tucky that * ' our political problem now is, Can we 
as a nation continue together permanently forever, 
half slave and half free V u and he had had some- 
thing to say on the same point in his brilliant 
Bloomington speech in 1856, although he was 
strongly recommended by his friends not to indulge 
1 "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 216. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONFLICT KM 

in the repetition of sm-h sentiments. l Now he 
amplified the thought, and in accepting the nomina- 
tion for the United States senatorship, deliberately 
declared that the agitation of the slavery question 
"will not cease until a crisis shall have been 
reached and passed. ' A house divided against 
itself caunot stand. 7 I believe this government 
cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — 
I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it 
will cease to be divided. It will become all one 
thing or all the other. Either the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it and 
place it where the public mind shall rest in the be- 
lief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction ; 
or its advocates will push it forward till it shall be- 
come alike lawful in all the states, old as well as 
new, North as well as South." 

In this speech Lincoln stated the faith that was 
in him, and with principles fairly and plainly set 
forth, he felt himself well fortified for a contest 
which he looked forward to with no misgivings. 
He did not underestimate the strength and resource 
of his adversary. He had met Douglas before. 
Their lives had been cast in the same lines by some 
inexplicable fate for more than twenty years, and 
now they would have a final crossing of swords for 
the supremacy of their principles. 

1 Hermloii, p. 396. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GREAT DEBATES 

Douglas had entered the Senate of the United 
States in the same year Lincoln had arrived at 
Washington to begin his single term in the other 
house of Congress. He was about completing his 
second term as a Senator of Illinois, and would now 
go before the people on his popular sovereignty 
issue, asking them to return a legislature to Spring- 
field which would reelect him to his exalted office 
for another period of six years. Douglas was either 
too intent upon his reendorsement by the people in 
a state in which the defeat of 1854 still rankled in 
his memory, or else his conscience sincerely re- 
volted at the spectacle in Kansas. At any rate he 
had taken occasion to quarrel with President Bu- 
chanan and his Southern allies, and refused to sup- 
port them in their attempt to admit the state under 
the Lecompton constitution. He would stand or 
fall, he declared, upon the principle that the people 
should decide whether they would or would not 
have slavery in their midst. But this decision 
must be fair. His principle did not contemplate 
the use of fraud and force in imposing statutes and 
constitutions upon an unwilling people, a declara- 
tion which strengthened him mightily in his own 



THE GEEAT DEBATES 103 

state and would doubtless have enabled him to gain 
an overwhelming triumph, but for the faet that his 
progress was contested by the great form of Abra 
ham Lincoln, now again raised to the height of 
seven feet, quick with humor, intelligence and el<> 
quence, speaking from an honest heart. Horace 
Greeley and other anti-slavery leaders recommended 
that Douglas's reelection should not be opposed as 
a reward for his course on the Lecoinpton question. 
Though a sinner somewhat late in returning, they 
conceived that he might still further repent. Lin- 
coln did not entertain any such opinion, and it 
greatly complicated the task that lay before him to 
have this view propagated by men who should 
have been on his side unreservedly. 

Douglas, moreover, was arrogant and little dis- 
posed to brook opposition gracefully. Nearly 
twelve years a Senator of the United States, prom- 
inent in every matter of legislation, to whom 
leaders North and South came in acknowledgment 
of his brilliant capacity, he looked upon Lincoln's 
undertaking to contest the ground with him for a 
reelection as presumptuous in high degree. Much 
power and the consciousness of his political strength 
had made him little lit to lead a Democratic party. 
The administrative influence of the Illinois Central 
Railroad was undividedly exerted on his side, and 
special trains were freely placed at his disposal. 
Trimmed with flags and bunting, with cannon roar- 
ing salutes, his luxurious coaches sped over the 
rails from town to town. Brass bands and heralds 



104 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

with trumpets and colored banners announced his 
coming, and he was received by mayors and alder- 
men and bodies of distinguished citizens serving ou 
reception committees, with every sign of jubilation 
and pomp, like some conquering hero returned 
from a triumphant war. He arrived in Illinois in 
July, liberally supplied with funds which it was 
said he had secured in the East, and opened his 
campaign with a speech on the ninth of that month 
from the balcony of a hotel in Chicago. This de- 
liverance was meant to be a reply to the carefully 
worded oration with which Lincoln had accepted 
the Eepublican nomination, including that passage 
soon to become famous likening the condition of 
the country to the Scriptural u house divided 
against itself. v Lincoln sat upon the platform 
while Douglas addressed the immense assemblage, 
and on the next day replied from the same rostrum 
in an argument which was the basis for much of 
the discourse of both candidates in the following 
months. Leaving Chicago, Douglas passed to 
Bloomington, where he spoke on July 16th, and 
upon the 17th his train, with his artillery and brass 
band, invaded Lincoln's own city of Springfield. 
Upon this occasion Douglas spoke in the afternoon 
and Lincoln in the evening, and the danger was 
great that the Democrats with " their thunderings 
of cannon, their marching and music, their fizzle- 
gigs and fireworks" 1 might sweep the state by 
mere brute excitement. 

Lincoln, "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 262. 



THE GKEAT DEBATES 105 

To forestall any such result, Lincoln, in consul- 
tation with the Eepublican campaign managers, 
proposed a series of debates. The meetings at Chi- 
cago and Springfield had practically assumed this 
form, and it was designed now, if Douglas would 
agree, that the opening arguments and the rejoin- 
ders should be made upon the same day from a 
common platform, in some specified manner, under 
rules mutually agreeable to the contesting candi- 
dates. On July 24th Lincoln issued his challenge, 
and Douglas after some parrying of the suggestion, 
because it had not been sooner offered agreed to 
seven joint meetings, one in each Congressional 
district, barring the Chicago and Springfield dis- 
tricts, viz. : at Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charles- 
ton, Galesburg, Quincy and Alton. Two meetings 
were fixed for August, two for September and 
three for October. It was specified that one 
speaker should open the discussion for an hour, 
being followed by the other for an hour and a half, 
when the first would be allowed a half hour to con- 
clude the debate. The positions of the two men 
under the arrangement were to be alternated, and 
Douglas not very magnanimously reserved to him- 
self four openings and closes to Lincoln's three, a 
condition the latter accepted, though not without 
shrewdly directing attention to the inequality of 
the terms which the powerful senator had imposed. 

Lincoln conducted a canvass very different from 
his opponent's because of the meagreness of his 
means. While Douglas is supposed to have ex- 



10(> ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pended $50,000, it was with great difficulty that 
Lincoln could secure a few hundred dollars to meet 
the necessary demands of his campaign, $250 of 
which he was himself obliged afterward to con- 
tribute to make up the deficit incurred by the Re- 
publican committee, a sum paid without objection 
since having " the post of honor," as he observed it 
was not for him to be "over nice." No special 
trains, or bands of music, or cannon, or receptions, 
or companies of marching men added eclat to his 
movements from place to place. He came with his 
followers in "prairie schooners," stopped at hum- 
ble inns, and if his addresses produced so much 
enthusiasm at times that he was borne off upon the 
shoulders of his friends, it was not to any couch of 
luxury to rest from the weary toil of continuous 
public speaking. Douglas had the advantage 
which the prestige of office always gives, and not 
only as a Senator but as a likely future President 
of the United States, a destiny his friends fully ex- 
pected him to fulfil. "They have seen in his 
round, jolly, fruitful face," said Lincoln in a 
lighter passage in one of his speeches in this cam- 
paign, "post-offices, land-offices, marshalships and 
cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign 
missions bursting and sprouting out in wonderful 
exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their 
greedy hands. On the contrary," Lincoln contin- 
ued, "nobody has ever expected me to be Presi- 
dent. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever 
seen that any cabbages were sprouting out." 



THE GREAT DEBATES 107 

Lincoln suffered a disadvantage too in that the 
state was districted in the Democratic interest. I It- 
declared afterwards to his friends that he did not 
expect to elect a .Republican legislature. The ap- 
portionment had been made at a time when the pro- 
portion of population in the southern part of the 
state in what was called " Egypt' 7 was greater than 
in the north, which by Chicago's rapid settlement 
by anti-slavery elements was entitled to a represen- 
tation at Springfield, it had not yet come to possess. 
u You can't overturn a pyramid," Lincoln re- 
marked, "but yon ean undermine it ; that's what I 
have been trying to do.*' This he did do, and it 
was not very long, as future events disclosed, before 
the structure would topple and fall at his feet. 

There was no hall in the Illinois of that day, nor 
are there any in that state now, sufficiently large 
to admit the great crowds which gathered from 
places many miles distant to hear Lincoln and 
Douglas expound the slavery question. In Free- 
port the mass of people gathered in a common 
under the oaks and elms on the banks of Rock 
River ; at Ottawa the platform was erected in a 
public square under the branches of the locust 
trees, and at Quincy the two leaders spoke to an 
audience in an open space that stretched away to 
the Mississippi. Everywhere there were vast con- 
courses of people on seats, reclining in groups on 
the ground and in their carriages and farm wagons, 
many of whom could not hear the speakers' words 
by any possibility. At Charleston it is estimated 



108 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that fully 20,000 people who camped iu the groves 
at night, were assembled in front of the speakers' 
stand. Douglas was a practiced open air orator, 
and Lincoln's high clear voice was accustomed to 
the task of addressing assemblages literally cover- 
ing acres of ground. Yet, although silence was re- 
quested in order that the sound might be conveyed 
over the greatest possible distance, it was entirely 
vain to undertake to bring such crowds within the 
range of human hearing. 

The first meeting at Ottawa in the northern part 
of the state was marked by some amiable inter- 
changes in which as Lincoln observed in his letter 
to a friend the next day "the fire flew some," 
though neither man was stirred to his true depths. 
The antagonists were but measuring their swords 
for their later contests in which no quarter was 
asked or given, and accusations of bad faith, false 
statement and corrupt motive were freely mixed 
with learned allusions to the fundamental doctrines 
of the constitution. "I was aware when it was 
first agreed that Judge Douglas and I were to have 
these seven joint discussions," said Lincoln at 
Quincy, "that they were the successive acts of a 
drama to be enacted not merely in the face of audi - 
ences like this, but in the face of the nation and to 
some extent by my relation to him, and not from 
anything in myself, in the face of the world." He 
was anxious therefore that they should be conducted 
with dignity, and in the good temper which would 
befit the vast audiences by which they would be 



THE GREAT DEBATES 109 

heard. That Lincoln was not the first to err Un- 
published records of the debates will clearly prove. 

Douglas went forward on the theory that qwi 
s 7 excuse s' accuse and promptly put forth his 
charge that Lincoln as a Whig and Trumbull as a 
Democrat, had formed a combination to " abolition- 
ize" their respective parties for which service the 
first would take General Shields' place as Senator 
in 1854, the second receiving the promise of the 
seat to be filled in 1858. Plans had miscarried and 
the two * ' Black Republicans ' ' were compelled to 
change their places, but were still acting harmo- 
niously in an effort to carry out the terms of the bar- 
gain. It was with peculiar delight also that Douglas 
referred to Lincoln's opposition while in Congress 
to the Mexican War, because the first blood was 
not shed upon the right ' ' spot, ' ' an amusing thrust 
at the "Spot Resolutions" which lost the San- 
gamon district to the Whig party in 1848. These 
two personal charges in connection with a third 
that as a young man he had been a " grocery 
keeper " were calculated to aggravate Lincoln quite 
as much as that one, with which he responded, 
stung the pride of Douglas. 

Lincoln at Springfield, in the speech in which he 
made his famous declaration about the house 
divided against itself, had alluded to a plan precon- 
certed by Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James to 
bring the slavery question to its present pass 
through the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and 
the establishment in its stead of the popular sover- 



110 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

eignty theory, followed by the Kansas scheme and 
the Dred Scott decision. These things he con- 
tended, as great numbers of people implicitly be- 
lieved, were but single parts of a general conspir- 
acy. This statement repeated at Ottawa drew from 
Douglas (Stephen) the declaration that to utter such 
a charge, calculated as it was " to bring down and 
destroy the purest and best of living men," was an 
unpardonable presumption on the part of Lincoln 
who had not "character enough for integrity and 
truth merely on his own ipse dixit to arraign Presi- 
dent Buchanan [James], President Pierce [Frank- 
lin] and uiue judges of the Supreme Court [Roger 
and his associates] not one of whom would be 
complimented by being put on an equality with 
him." If it be said that this was not the retort 
courteous it is a fair measure of the opponent 
whom Lincoln was compelled to face and the 
language employed on this occasion must be 
accounted mild in comparison with that which was 
indulged in as the campaign progressed. The 
leaders with their respective friends were traveling 
and speaking constantly : the debates twice a 
month did not represent a tithe of what even these 
two men were saying to the people of Illinois upon 
an issue that absorbed public attention in greatrr 
degree than anything presented to them since the 
famous Harrison campaign of 1 840. 

Douglas was trivial. He did not hesitate to call 
attention to the fact if Lincoln failed to consume 
the time allotted him and concluded, when this was 



THE GREAT DEBATES 111 

the case to the amusement of the crowd, that he 
had stopped because he could think of nothing 
more to say. Another time he took advantage of 
Lincoln's being carried from the platform on the 
shoulders of his enthusiastic friends and alleged 
that he had been used up in the contest. 

The " Little Giant " was imperious and truculent. 
He sought to have it appear that Lincoln was 
wholly in his clutches, that in his grip he was as a 
mouse being shaken by a mastiff. . 

He was abusive. He flung the lie in its plainest 
terms and unconcealed by polite verbiage, charged 
forgery, denied palpable facts, twisted and dodged 
opposing arguments and appealed with all the 
trickery of the demagogue to the passions and 
prejudices of the people gathered before him. It 
was a favorite device for instance to ask his friends 
not to interrupt his discourse with cheers, lest 
valuable time which he wished to devote to his 
argument be fruitlessly consumed. He accused his 
adversary of base insinuations and a generally 
reprehensible manner in debate when he was him- 
self the leader in the offense. Any interjection 
by the crowd was likely to be regarded as a dSJi 
calling for some opprobrious allusion to the 
mob spirit prevalent in the "Black Republican" 
party. He wished it to be observed that the 
Democrats had politer manners and did not re- 
quire reproof from the speaker's stand. He 
hurled epithets when nettled in the discussion with 
a fluency that scarcely another speaker of his day 



112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

could command. A Republican was always a 
" Black Republican " despite interruptions in 
Abolition towns of "white, white" and a playful 
request from time to time to change the color and 
' ' make it a little brown. ' ' Negroes were stumping 
the state for "their brother Abe/ 7 and Douglas at 
the head of a party which believed that America 
should be governed by Europeans and the children 
of Europeans was conducting a war upon " Father 
Giddings, the high priest of Abolitionism," Fred 
Douglas, who had hovered on the outside of one of 
the audiences, sitting in an open barouche beside a 
white woman and her daughter, "Parson" Love- 
joy, Lincoln and the " whole white, black and 
mixed drove." Lincoln and Trumbull were 
"disappointed politicians" "who had retired or 
had been driven into obscurity by an outraged 
constituency because of their political sins," only 
to spring up again now in the ruins of the parties 
they had conspired to destroy. 

Douglas's consciousness of his superiority over 
his adversary, and indeed every other man in the 
state, was unconcealed. He reiterated that he had 
lived in Illinois for twenty -five years, and his 
record was a matter of common knowledge to the 
people. "Lincoln asks you to elect him to the 
United States Senate to-day," he continued, 
" solely because he and Trumbull can slander me." 
He went so far as to declare at Galesburg that 
Lincoln was being aided in his canvass by Federal 
patronage freely dispensed at Washington, to 



THE GREAT DEBATES 113 

Republican advantage in Illinois as a punishment 
for his (Douglas's) action in opposing the admission 
of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution. In 
short, he was deterred by no feeling of humility, no 
sense of fairness, no considerations of respect for the 
truth, and resorted to every device of his fertile mind 
and his fluent tongue to accomplish his reelection 
and perpetuate his supremacy. In one of his 
speeches Douglas denounced the charge that he had 
had a part in the Stephen, Franklin, Roger and 
James conspiracy as u an infamous lie," and no 
meeting was allowed to pass without recourse to 
language equally unparliamentary. 

Lincoln, more careful in statement but aggressive 
and bold in attack, and absolutely inflexible in 
position when it was a question of defending his 
rights, was far less likely to be led into passionate 
utterance. "I set out in this campaign," he re- 
marked in his speech of July 17, at Springfield, 
"with the intention of conducting it as a gentle- 
man, in substance at least if not in the outside 
polish. The latter I shall never be, but that which 
constitutes the inside of a gentleman I hope I 
understand, and am not less inclined to practice 
than others." At Freeport he remarked in his 
calm but effective manner: "It is most ex- 
traordinary that Judge Douglas should so far for- 
get all the suggestions of justice to an adversary, or 
of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the 
assertion of that which the slightest investigation 
would have shown him to be false." Again Lin- 



114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

coin complained that Douglas was "playing 
cuttlefish," which as was explained is a small 
species of fish that has no mode of defending itself 
when pursued except by throwing out a black 
fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy 
cannot see it, and thus escapes. Another time, at 
Jonesboro, Lincoln remarked with considerable 
directness and force: "I don't want to have a 
fight with Judge Douglas and I have no way of 
making an argument up into the consistency of a 
corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it." The 
inimitable response to Douglas's complaint at 
Freeport that the crowd, which was sympathetically 
Republican, interrupted his speech has often been 
admired. "I wish to remind you," said Douglas 
in his testy way when some of his unpopular 
utterances raised a clamor in the audience, "that 
while Mr. Lincoln was speaking there was not a 
Democrat vulgar and blackguard enough to 
interrupt him. But I know that the shoe is pinch- 
ing you. I am clinching Lincoln now and you are 
scared to death for the result. I have seen this 
tiling before. I have seen men make appointments 
for joint discussions, and the moment their man has 
been heard, try to interrupt and prevent a fair 
hearing of the other side. I have seen your mobs 
before and defy your wrath." 

Lincoln rising for the rejoinder remarked : " The 
first thing I have to say to you is a word in 
regard to Judge Douglas's declaration about the 
4 vulgarity and blackguardism ' in the audience — 



THE GREAT DEBATES 115 

that no such thing as he says was shown by any 
Democrat while I was speaking. Now I only wish 
by way of reply to say that while I was speaking I 
used no i vulgarity or blackguardism ' toward any 
Democrat. ' ' 

Lincoln, as Douglas freely predicted, was under 
the greatest disadvantage with his principles in 
u lower Egypt" whither he was led to the third 
joint debate. It was here at Jonesboro that the 
Republican candidate took his unscrupulous 
adversary to task for the canard about his being 
carried off the debating stand in an exhausted 
condition. In this connection Lincoln observed : 
"I don't want to quarrel with Judge Douglas — to 
call him a liar — but when I come square up to him 
I don't know what else to call him, if I must tell 
the truth out." 

While this language show^s material progress in 
the descent to Douglas's standards in debate, it was 
in the meeting at Charleston in unfriendly surround- 
ings, on September 18, that Lincoln's ire rose to its 
highest pitch and led him into the use of words 
which upon reflection he must have regretted very 
deeply. The explanation of his thus forgetting the 
rules he would have preferred to observe even 
under the greatest provocation is that he was 
resenting gross attacks not upon himself, but upon 
h is friend Senator Trumbull . In this debate Lincoln 
suggested to Douglas that " it will not avail him at 
all that he swells himself up, takes on dignity, and 
calls people liars." When he will not tell what the 



116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

true reason was for certain action on the Kansas 
bill, said Lincoln pursuing the subject, " he stands 
in the attitude of an accused thief who has stolen 
goods in his possession, and when called to account 
refuses to tell where he got them." In the midst of 
his discourse, to illustrate the untruth of the story 
concerning his policy on the Mexican War, he 
turned to the crowd on the platform, seized O. B. 
Ficklin, a Democrat who had been a member of 
Congress with him in the forties, and who knew 
personally that Douglas "lied," leading the man 
forward as a witness with such muscular force that 
he never forgot the experience. The warmth of 
Lincoln's argument at this meeting exceeded that 
displayed by him at any other time in the canvass, 
and his reasoning, while upon a point of no interest 
to posterity, was unanswerable. Douglas could not 
keep his seat. He walked rapidly up and down 
the platform, watch in hand, i ' his long grizzled 
hair waving in the wind," says a spectator, "like 
the shaggy locks of an enraged lion." 1 Lincoln 
came to the point. l i Why does he not answer the 
facts ? ... If you have ever studied geometry 
yon remember that by a course of reasoning, Euclid 
proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to 
two right angles. Euclid has shown how to work 
it out. Now if you undertook to disprove that 
proposition, to show that it was erroneous, would 
you do it by calling Euclid a liar ? That is the way 
Judge Douglas answers Trumbull." This sentence 

1 Arnold, p. 148. 



THE ( iKEAT DEBATES 1 1 7 

finished, Douglas cried out excitedly, " Sit down, 
Lincoln, sit down. Your time's up," and turning 
around Lincoln said imperturbably, as a man in 
complete command of the situation, " I will. I will 
quit, I believe my time is up." "Douglas has 
had enough," observed an occupant of the plat- 
form, and in this manner ended what was without 
question the most spectacular of all the meetings 
between the two great political leaders of Illinois. 

But there was vastly more than personality, 
polite and impolite, in this memorable canvass. 
Douglas directed his argument to three main 
propositions upon which he conceived that Lincoln 
was particularly vulnerable in the then existing 
state of public opinion in Illinois. The first of 
these was the equality of the negro and the white 
man ; the second Lincoln's theory that the republic 
could not endure half slave and half free, and the 
third the finality of the Dred Scott decision. The 
Republican candidate occupied himself whenever he 
was put upon the defensive in meeting these three is- 
sues. While each speaker aimed by propounding 
questions to lead the other unwarily into some rash- 
ness of statement that could be employed to partisan 
advantage, it was not in this exercise that anything 
of an effective nature was contributed to the anti- 
slavery discussion. Nor did attack upon or defense 
of popular sovereignty play so prominent a part in 
the debates as in 1854, when the principle was 
freshly enunciated, and when Douglas had not yet 
conciliated his constituents through his course upon 



118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the bills to admit Kansas under a slave constitu- 
tion. While Lincoln reminded the audiences that 
Douglas did not care whether slavery was " voted 
down or voted up,'' and satirically referred, drolly 
imitating Douglas's manner to the "gur-reat pur- 
rinciple" of popular sovereignty, otherwise known 
as squatter sovereignty and the " sacred right of 
self-government," which was nothing more, he re- 
peated, than the doctrine " that if one man would 
enslave another no third man should object," 
political discussion had passed the point when 
interest was acute in the precise weapon that had 
dealt the blow of death at the Missouri Com- 
promise. 

It was Douglass desire, and so shrewd a poli- 
tician knew the temper of the people and the time, 
to confuse Lincoln with the Abolitionists than 
which by curious perversion of moral ideas, there 
was no more hideous word in the English language 
in the South, and few that aroused greater loathing 
in the minds of large bodies of people in the north- 
ern states. At Charleston he publicly declared 
that his principal object was to "show up" his 
adversary's "negro equality doctrines." On this 
line he was "driving Lincoln to the wall," for 
"white men would not support his rank Abolition- 
ism." That Lincoln was put upon his defense at 
every point on this question, especially in the 
southern part of the state, becomes very clear upon 
a reading of this remarkable series of speeches. He 
was compelled at every meeting to deny unequivo- 



THE GREAT DEBATES 110 

cally that he had any hand in the early negotiations 
for the formation of the Republican party, and it 
was fortunate indeed for him that he had refused 
to cooperate with the ardent spirits, such as Mr. 
Lovejoy, who had sought to take him into their 
councils in 1854. He could now declare that he 
had had no part in the adoption of their radical 
platforms. He could declare that he never had 
been and was not now in favor of the repeal of the 
Fugitive Slave Law. He could say that if in Con- 
gress he might, though it would be with sincere 
regret, vote to admit more slave states into the 
Union, if the people of the territories had freely 
expressed themselves in favor of slaveholding. He 
was able even to assert regarding Henry Clay's 
proposition to "sweep from our capital that foul 
blot upon the nation," the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia, that he would advocate 
only gradual action after a vote of the people with 
compensation to the owners of slaves. Such declara- 
tions judged by the standards which Lincoln estab- 
lished for himself five or six years later do not seem 
very well fitted to confuse him in the public mind 
with the Abolitionists, but Douglas pursued him at 
every point at which his record was at all suscep- 
tible of an interpretation of sympathetic alliance 
with the radicals. 

It was Douglas's constant endeavor also to prove 
that Lincoln had two sets of principles for the two 
ends of the state. In the north he threatened dire 
consequences if what Lincoln said should reach the 



120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ears of the people in "Egypt." In Egypt he 
freely observed that sentiments were expressed 
which could not be repeated at Freeport or Chi- 
cago. The principles of the Republicans, he said, 
"are jet black in the north, in the centre they are 
in color a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they 
are almost white." 

Douglas, on his side, nowhere feared openly to 
express his sentiments on the race question, and 
doubtless he interpreted the public mood very ac- 
curately. To him all that was said of the equality 
of men in the Declaration of Independenee and 
other charts of liberty and right was not intended 
for the negro's benefit. He was in the position of 
the French woman who said of her butler when 
asked why she permitted a man to come to her with 
her chocolate while she was in undress — " Appel- 
les-tu ca un homme," and of the young maiden in 
Virginia who shocked the sensibilities of Mrs. Trol- 
lope when she was among us, by lacing her stays 
in the presence of a black footman. "I do not re- 
gard the negro as my equal," said he at Ottawa, 
"and positively deny that he is my brother or any 
kin to me whatever." He had not yet uttered that 
unfortunate declaration which Lincoln used against 
him a little later, that in all contests between the 
negro and the white man he was for the white man, 
and in all questions between the negro and the 
crocodile he was for the negro. 1 However he did 
say very plainly in more than one debate : "I hold 
1 Douglas's Speech at Memphis, Temi. 



THE GKEAT DEBATES V2\ 

that a negro is not and never ought to be a citizen 
of the United States. I hold that this government 
was made on the white basis by white men for the 
benefit of white men and their posterity forever, 
and should be administered by white men and 
their posterity." At Alton in pursuit of the same 
idea he observed : "I hold that the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence had no reference to 
negroes at all when they declared all men to be 
created equal. They did not mean negroes, nor 
the savage Indians, nor the Feejee Islanders, nor 
any other barbarous race. They were speaking of 
white men." In urging such a view it is certain 
that Judge Douglas went to the extreme limit of 
what as a political candidate in 1858 it was feasible 
for him to declare to the people of Illinois for 
whose suffrages he asked. 

Lincoln did not hesitate to draw him into combat 
upon this ground. He used to say that he hated to 
see the fugitive slaves carried back i i to their stripes 
and unrequited toil." * He told Cassius M. Clay 
that "the man who raised the corn should eat the 
corn," and in the opening debate at Ottawa, in 1858, 
he repeated what he had first said in his Springfield 
speech, four years before. He was unwilling to be 
led into a false position as the advocate of the 
equality of the white man and the negro in all re- 
spects. "But," he continued, rising impressively 
to his full height, "in the right to eat the bread 
without the leave of anybody else which his own 
»" Speeches," Vol. I, p. 216. 



122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hand earns he is my equal, and the equal of Judge 
Douglas, and the equal of every living inau." He 
stoutly combatted the doctrine that the black man 
was not provided for in the guarantees of liberty 
in the Declaration of Independence, ' ' as having a 
tendency to dehumanize the negro — to take away 
from him the right of ever striving to be a man," 
and as ' * one of a thousand things constantly done 
in these days to prepare the public mind to make 
property, and nothing but property, of the negro in 
all the states of this Union." 

There is not a shade of difference, Lincoln said 
at Alton, between the theory which supports slavery 
and that which justifies the king who would rule by 
Divine Eight. ' i It is the same spirit that says, 
You toil and work and earn bread and I'll eat it. 
No matter in what shape it comes, whether from 
the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the 
people of his own nation and live by the fruit of 
their labor or from one race of men as an apology 
for enslaving another race it is the same tyrannical 
principle." 

Nevertheless Lincoln at many places in the course 
of the campaign felt it to be an obligation in fair- 
ness to his ambition to accomplish his Democratic 
opponent's defeat to qualify and still further ex- 
plain his doctrine of equality. To Douglas's pre- 
tended delight Lincoln remarked in his opening 
speech in the fourth joint debate at Charleston, a 
question as to his exact position on the point having 
been propounded to him by an old gentleman at his 



THE GEEAT DEBATES L23 

hotel: — "I will say that I am not, nor ever have 
been, in favor of bringing about in any way the 
social and political equality of the white and black 
races — that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of 
making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualify- 
ing them to hold office, nor to intermarry with the 
white people, and I -will say in addition to this that 
there is a physical difference between the white and 
black races which I believe will forever forbid the 
two living together on terms of social and political 
equality." ' 

This very positive statement against the enfran- 
chisement of the black man was perhaps of greater 
interest and meaning both to negrophile and negro - 
phobe than any other passage uttered by Mr. Lin- 
coln in the debates. It was well understood what 
were his own and every other " Black Republican's" 
views on the subject of miscegenation which Doug- 
las and his friends professed to believe was the 
certain consequence of the theory of equality. " I 
do not understand that because I do not want a 
negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want 
her for a wife," said Lincoln very clearly. "My 
understanding is that I can just let her alone. I 
am now in my fiftieth year and I certainly never 
have had a black woman for either a slave or a 
wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get 
along without making either slaves or wives of 
negroes." 

The idea entertained by Judge Douglas that he 
1 "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 369. 



124 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

was in favor of the perfect social and political 
equality of the races, Lincoln said at another time, 
is "but a specious and fantastic arrangement of 
words by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut 
to be a chestnut horse." 

The second point at which Lincoln was put upon 
the defensive was, as his friends had foreseen, his 
statement about the certain fall of a house divided 
against itself, and the impossibility of the nation 
enduring permanently half slave and half free. 
Upon this subject with these words before him 
Douglas charged that his opponent was inviting 
"a war of sections, a war between Illinois and Ken- 
tucky, a war between the free states and the slave 
states, a war between the North and the South." 
Lincoln resented such an interpretation of his ut- 
terances. He had made only a prophecy ; expressed 
no desire. He was firm in his conviction that the 
republic had been deflected from the course in 
which it had been set by its founders. With his- 
torical evidence as his witness at every point he 
declared that it had been the early policy of the 
government by all the means in its power, to check 
the growth and spread of slavery, and to prepare the 
way for its "ultimate extinction." Instead of this 
policy to-day what did the nation sec? The inven- 
tion of the cotton-gin had made slavery a national 
necessity in the opinion of the Southern leaders, and 
the republic passed from the basis upon which it 
had been placed by the "Fathers" to the cotton- 
gin basis. The question, the platforms of both old 



THE GREAT DEBATES 125 

parties declared, had been "forever" disposed of 
by the Compromises of 1850. Then came Popular 
Sovereignty. In the Nebraska bill "the last tip of 
the last joint of the old serpent's tail was just draw- 
ing out of view," x but the dispute still raged and 
gained in virulent headway. i i If Kansas should 
sink to-day and leave a great vacant space in the 
earth's surface," said Lincoln, "this vexed ques- 
tion would still be among us." Slavery, he re- 
peated, must be placed k ' where the public mind 
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of 
ultimate extinction." He did not deceive him self 
in the thought that extinction would come in a day 
or a year or two years, but that it would come he 
had prophesied, and there was no reason for him to 
change his belief. The suggestion, it is true, sa- 
vored of civil war. "The party to which Lincoln 
belongs," said Douglas at Quincy, " is bounded and 
limited by geographical lines. With this principle 
they cannot even cross the Mississippi River on 
your ferry-boats. They cannot cross over the Ohio 
into Kentucky. Lincoln himself cannot visit the 
land of his fathers, the scenes of his childhood, the 
graves of his ancestors, and carry his Abolition 
principles as he declared them at Chicago with 
him. This Republican organization appeals to the 
North against the South ; it appeals to Northern 
passion, Northern prejudice and Northern ambition 
against Southern people, Southern states and South- 
ern institutions." 

1 Lincoln at Alton. 



126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

To such an argument Lincoln replied that Doug- 
las himself was fast becoming sectional, and that 
"his speeches would not go current now South 
of the Ohio River as they had formerly gone there." 
And he concluded : "Whatever may be the result 
of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas 
and myself I see the day rapidly approaching when 
his pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrust- 
ing down the throats of Republicans for years past, 
will be crowded down his own throat." 

Douglas's satirical observations that Lincoln was 
seeking to appeal from the Supreme Court and pass 
a law to reverse the Dred Scott decision, did not de- 
ter him from freely continuing his criticisms of that 
deliverance. That it could not stand he very well 
knew and openly predicted. His most successful 
response to Douglas when the latter chose to carry 
the argument into this field was suggested by the 
curious circumstance that, while the Supreme 
Court had declared in favor of the constitutionality 
of a national bank, all the followers of Andrew Jack- 
son and party platforms upon which Judge Douglas 
stood continued to declare that Congress was not 
competent to charter a bank. It was also an inter- 
esting point that while the Dred Scott decision ex- 
pressly gave any citizen the right to carry his slaves 
with him into a territory of the United States by 
Judge Douglas's theory of popular sovereignty the 
people of that same territory by vote might drive 
the slave out of it again. The advantage there- 
fore never leaned strongly to the Democratic side 



THE GREAT DEBATES L27 

when the discussion turned to the Dred Scott 
decision. 

Douglas, it is often said, won to him hearers who 
were moved easily in response to impulse. For 
immediate results his shrewdness in taking hold of 
points and pressing them home with dexterity Mas 
an effective agency in the debates. His brilliant 
turns brought applause and cheers, but for a sense 
of their cleverness rather than because of any deep 
conviction they carried with them. After Lin- 
coln's speeches it was observed that the people 
wore a look of seriousness. They were reflecting 
and discussing the questions that one of the clearest, 
most eloquent and most forcible of orators had 
brought before their minds. It was not their pas- 
sion, their enthusiasm or their prejudice which had 
been aroused ; he had touched instead their reason 
and their sense of right. 

Wherever else he yielded he was unflinching in 
his demand that slavery should not be introduced 
into the territories. The hope of the country was 
in not teaching and propagating the evil on free 
soil later to be used in the construction of states. 
He sought to lead Douglas into some statement con- 
cerning the wrong of the institution. "I confess 
myself as belonging to that class in the country 
who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and po- 
litical evil," said Lincoln at Galesburg, "having 
due regard for its actual existence amongst us and 
the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory 
way and to all the constitutional obligations which 



128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

have been thrown about it ; but who nevertheless 
desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as 
a wrong and looks hopefully to the time when as 
a wrong it may come to an end." Douglas de- 
clined the invitation to discuss the subject of right 
or wrong since by his theory this was a point upon 
which he had no right to act. Lincoln had un- 
evasively declared, "I have no purpose either di- 
rectly or indirectly to interfere with the institu- 
tion of slavery in the states where it exists. I 
believe I have no lawful right to do so and I 
have no inclination to do so." Nevertheless Doug- 
las to the end of the campaign in the manner of 
the demagogue, which the historian would of ne- 
cessity regard him were his record not alleviated 
by better deeds in other stages of his political ca- 
reer, continued to confuse the state with the terri- 
tory. "Under the constitution of this Union each 
state has a right to do as it pleases on the subject 
of slavery," and "it is none of our business 
whether slavery exists in Missouri or not," were 
sentiments with which he aimed to capture the at- 
tention and confidence of his auditors. 

"I care more for the great principle of self- 
government, the right of the people to rule than I 
do for all the negroes in Christendom," said Doug- 
las at the last of the joint meetings. On the other 
side Lincoln declared that this " self-government " 
of Douglas's had been "nothing but a living, creep- 
ing lie from the time of its introduction till to-day." 
Thus the remarkable series of speeches ended. By 



THE GREAT DEBATES 120 

these principles, personalities and prejudices was 
this great contest characterized. In the debates it 
was conceded by impartial judges that Lincoln had 
gained the moral and intellectual advantage though 
his recognition and reward were delayed. The Re- 
publicans carried Illinois for their state ticket, but 
Douglas through the unfair apportionment secured 
the legislature, and in January, 1859, by a majority 
of eight votes was returned to the Senate for his 
third term, though his victory left at home a man 
upon whom the eyes of the people North and Soutli 
had been irresistibly directed and for whom they 
were soon to find a task of vastly greater difficulty 
and more enduring consequence. 



CHAPTER V 

NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 

The campaign having ended in Illinois and the 
result of the contest being known, Douglas started 
off to be absent for several weeks in the South, 
where he sought ineffectually to close the widening 
breach between the Northern and Southern wings 
of the Democratic party. He also spoke in several 
Northern states. Wherever he went he alluded to 
his recent tournament with Lincoln and sought to 
expose the dangers that lay only half hidden under 
the surfaces of the Republican creed. From the po- 
litical managers of many states calls came for Lin- 
coln whose assistance was needed in the work of 
organizing and strengthening the party for the im- 
pending contest for the presidency. He consented 
to make two speeches in the Ohio campaign of 1859. 
"The fight must go on," Mr. Lincoln wrote to 
Henry Asbury a fortnight after his defeat in the 
election in Illinois; "the cause of civil liberty 
must not be surrendered at the end of one or even 
one hundred defeats. No ingenuity can keep these 
antagonistic elements in harmony long. Another 
explosion will soon come." ' He was entirely ready 
to bear his fair part of the burden in carrying on 

1 "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 521. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 131 

the contest. He had agreed upon its importunity to 
pay $250 to the state committee to meet its defi- 
ciencies during the campaign of 1858, and this in 
spite of the fact that he had contributed his own 
time and services to the neglect of private business 
and had borne all his " ordinary expenses " while 
traversing the state, being at the end of the canvass 
" absolutely without money for even household 
purposes." ' 

Lincoln's opening speech in Ohio was delivered at 
Columbus on September 16. It was his first appear- 
ance, he said by way of a preface to his address, be- 
fore an audience in that state and it was a carefully 
presented and dignified political oration free of the 
personal vituperation which in the heat of conflict 
unavoidably found its way into the Illinois debates. 
He again took occasion to deny that he was in any 
manner sympathetic with negro suffrage, "a vile 
conception ' ' which an Ohio newspaper in welcom- 
ing him to the state said with great untruth he 
had attempted to defend in the campaign of 1858, 
and proceeded to dissect Douglas's u copyright es- 
say," an article lately contributed by him to 
Harper's Magazine. He had now come to regard 
Douglas as t i the most dangerous enemy of liberty 
because the most insidious one." After quoting 
some favorite passages from Henry Clay he brought 
his address to an end with these stirring sentences : 
"I ask attention to the fact that in a preeminent 
degree these popular sovereigns are at this work ; 
» "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 521. 



132 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

blowing out the moral lights around us ; teaching 
that the negro is no longer a man, but a brute ; that 
the Declaration has nothing to do with him ; that 
he ranks with the crocodile and the reptile ; that 
man with body and soul is a matter of dollars and 
cents. I suggest to this portion of the Ohio Kepub- 
licans, or Democrats, if there be any present, the 
serious consideration of this fact that there is now 
going on among you a steady process of debauching 
public opinion on this subject. With this, my 
friends, I bid you adieu." 

In Cincinnati on the evening of the next day he 
spoke in an entirely different manner. It was the 
first time in his life, Mr. Lincoln began, that he 
had appeared ' ' before an audience in so great a city 
as this." He addressed himself more particularly 
to the Kentuckians whom Douglas said he was en- 
gaged in setting on the people of Ohio and whom 
he desired to shoot at over the line to the destruc- 
tion of the domestic peace. This idea gave much 
novelty and fascination to his address, and by the 
means which he adopted, his arguments, although 
in no sense new, were presented in another guise. 

These two speeches were of unmistakable weight in 
the balance in Ohio in 1859. The intimacy of his 
relations with his audience and his good humor in 
the face of interruption, were among the most serv- 
iceable of his attributes as a political orator. No 
speaker trained upon the western stump before the 
war could be expected to be deficient in readiness 
to deal with friendly and unfriendly interjection. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 133 

In Cincinnati, in referring to Douglas's crocodiles, 
he touched a chord somewhere in his audience and 
was harking back many years in his own life, when 
he explained that "we old Ohio River boatmen 
used to call them alligators." He frequently spoke 
to a man near him whom he singled out to illustrate 
some idea which he wished to expound with more 
than ordinary clearness. "O Lord!" ejaculated 
a hearer somewhere in the audience at Cincinnati, 
as he was making a point that stung the Democratic 
sensibilities. "That is my Kentuckian I am talk- 
ing to now," Lincoln flashed back. "Speak to 
Ohio men and not to Kentuckians," commanded 
another man in the assemblage. i ' I beg permis- 
sion," the orator responded, " to speak as I please." 
"Put on your specs," urged an auditor, as Lincoln 
took out of their case an old pair of spectacles to 
read an extract from one of Douglas's deliverances. 
"Yes, sir," he replied, "I am obliged to do so. 
I am no longer a young man." "Give us some- 
thing beside Drid Scott," an Irishman interjected, 
after listening in patience for some time to an expo- 
sition of that famous Supreme Court decision. 
"Yes, no doubt you want to hear something that 
don't hurt," answered this inimitable man of the 
people. 

Lincoln's was now a name on many lips in the 
West, quite within the bounds of possibility as the 
choice of the Republican party for the presidential 
nomination in 1860. His speeches in the debates 
with Douglas and the two addresses delivered in 



134 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Ohio of far greater permanent value, because free 
of the personalities of local politics, were printed to- 
gether and sold in editions aggregating many thou- 
sands of copies. The men who have claimed the 
distinction of first bringing forward Mr. Lincoln as 
the Eepublican nominee, were as numerous as the 
offices which were to be filled with good Eepub- 
licans when he arrived at Washington. The man 
who made him the choice of the Chicago convention 
of 1860 was Abraham Lincoln. For ten years he 
had committed no political mistakes, and while dur- 
ing much of this time he was chiefly distinguished 
as a retailer of trivial and inelegant anecdotes, he 
had great moments, as in 1854 and 1858, through 
which glimpses were received of the genius that 
burned for expression in a national cause. If Lin- 
coln did not see the presidency at the end of the 
way he was now pursuing, he had distinct visions 
of senatorships and vice-presidencies. There was 
something now in life for him worth his living and 
striving for, and he was so regulating his political 
action with reference to the changing state of public 
opinion, with the aid of a group of his admiring 
friends, as to make himself inevitably the man of 
the hour when that hour should be at hand. To 
T. J. Pickett in April, 1859, who had suggested 
his candidacy, Lincoln wrote, "I must in candor 
say I do not think myself fit for the presidency." 
To others he was writing in the same way, and as 
modesty in public was no fault likely to jeopardize 
his chances in procuring the nomination, the people 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY L35 

could make up their own minds whether a man who 
was able to conduct such a campaign for the senator- 
ship as he had just conducted against Douglas, still 
combatting Lincoln's arguments with fervor in all 
parts of the country, who had been called into Ohio 
to aid the Republicans in their campaign, and who 
was soon to address one of the most intellectual 
of American audiences in Cooper Institute in New 
York city, was or was not fit to be President of the 
United States. 

Before going into the East, Lincoln, in December, 
1859, made a brief visit to Kansas to judge for him- 
self of the condition of affairs in that territory, 
speaking to audiences in at least five different towns 
including Atchison and Leavenworth. For several 
months he had been considering the question of his 
acceptance of an invitation to appear before an 
audience in Brooklyn or New York. From Beech - 
er's Plymouth Church came a suggestion that he 
would be paid $200 for a lecture, were he willing to 
deliver it. Later the arrangements were put into the 
hands of a Young Men's Republican Club, which 
had projected a series of political speeches. F. P. 
Blair of Missouri and Cassius M. Clay of Kentucky 
had already spoken, and for the third lecture Lin- 
coln was desired. Some misunderstanding arose as 
to the place in which the meeting was to be held, 
but there was none in the speaker's mind as to what 
would be expected of him, if he would acquit him- 
self creditably in the greatest city of the country. 
He prepared himself with every care until he had 



136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

an address which, in the historical learning it dis- 
played, surpassed anything yet attempted in his 
political career. 

A vast audience of men and women assembled in 
Cooper Institute on the night of February 27, 1860, to 
listen to his discourse, ' ' a larger assemblage of the in- 
tellect and mental culture " of the city, said the Trib- 
une in reporting the event the next morning, than 
any orator had addressed since the days of Webster 
and Clay. William Cullen Bryant presided. David 
Dudley Field conducted the speaker to the platform. 
Ex-Governor King, Horace Greeley and many other 
men eminent in the anti- slavery movement occupied 
prominent positions in the assemblage when this 
tall Springfield lawyer, who had bearded Douglas 
in the great senatorial canvass, rose to expound the 
issues to the people on the Atlantic seaboard. Some 
may have had their secret misgivings as his angular 
figure, clad in a suit of black, the cloth much mussed 
and wrinkled by its travels in a small valise, 
stepped to the front of the platform, but the im- 
pression was only momentary. In the address 
Lincoln inserted no West country anecdotes. His 
figures were lofty. He made no effort to be florid 
or to provoke laughter, and the effect was to dispel 
every thought of anything but an earnest, high- 
minded, scholarly man, bred to the knowledge of 
the republic's history and political institutions, 
who had mastered the problem that tormented the 
nation and made the conflict of sections seem not 
far away. Nearly one half of the address was de- 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 137 

voted to an interesting and successful effort to 
show with accurate citation of chapter and verse 
that a majority of the men who composed the con- 
vention that framed the Constitution of the United 
States in Philadelphia in 1787, were distinctly com- 
mitted against the proposition of the day that the 
Federal government lacked the power to control 
slavery in the territories. Another portion was 
addressed to the Southern people in a kindly man- 
ner, but in that bold and dauntless spirit which was 
a characteristic quality when he felt himself in the 
right. He ended with an appeal to his fellow Re- 
publicans. The total effect of the Cooper Institute 
speech was a settling of a consciousness over the 
East, that in the West had appeared an anti-slavery 
leader of presidential proportions. The New York 
newspapers reported the address in full and Bryant, 
speaking for the Evening Post, instead of complain- 
ing at its length expressed the wish that he had 
more material so interesting with which to fill the 
columns of his journal. The Tribune, as it ex- 
plained, omitted only "the tones, the gestures, the 
kindling eye and the mirth-provoking look. ' J These 
had defied the reporter's skill. 

While in New York Lincoln attended the services 
in Beecher's church and alone and incognito looked 
in upon a mission Sunday-school where he was invited 
to speak to the children who, whenever he made a 
movement to stop cried out, "Go on ! Oh, do go 
on!" As he rose to depart, the superintendent, 
asking the name of the visitor, was surprised to 



138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hear the answer, " Abraham Lincoln of Illinois." ] 
He made the acquaintance of George Bancroft in a 
bookshop and shortly turned his face toward New 
England whither he was going to see his son Robert, 
then at Phillips Exeter Academy, preparing for 
Harvard College. On the way, since elections 
were pending in Connecticut, Rhode Island and 
New Hampshire, he spoke at Hartford to an im- 
mense audience in the city hall, at New Haven, 
Meriden, Woonsocket, Bridgeport, Concord and 
Manchester. While the biographers of Lincoln 
who eulogize, sometimes at the expense of truth, have 
often striven to make it appear that this tour in- 
creased his political repute, a careful record of the 
addresses in Connecticut compel the opinion that he 
again, for some cause inexplicable in his character, 
fell away from his higher standards. Much inele- 
gant anecdote was introduced into these discourses 
in New England, where it was the least likely to be 
well received, and at Hartford he was even induced 
to take up sides in a strike then in progress in the 
local shoe factories, in which illustration was again 
given of the curious lack of knowledge that was 
always characteristic of him in the discussion of the 
simplest economic questions. 2 

He returned to Illinois a presidential candidate in 
every sense of that word, although he had made no 
open avowal of his intention to secure the nomina- 
tion, if that should be within his power, a move- 

1 J. G. Holland, " Life of Abraham Lincoln," p. 213. 
2 Lincoln, "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 625. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 139 

nient which he was sufficiently shrewd to know 
might serve to bring only confusion to his hopes. 
Before leaving Springfield for the East he had con- 
fessed to the chairman of the Republican state 
committee that his disappointment would be severe 
if he did not secure the Illinois delegates, and upon 
his return in March he wrote in spite of the long 
political struggle with its attendant u pecuniary 
loss" to at least one admirer in Kansas, offering 
$100 to bear his traveling expenses to the national 
convention. ! He was convinced that the tariff 
question ought not to be injected into the canvass, 
but was clear in the view that he should not obtrude 
himself into public notoriety by any statement in 
any sense upon any subject. 

He was as vigilant as he was ambitious ; as 
shrewd as he was eager for a nomination which it 
was fully understood would involve a contest with 
the Republican leaders in several states and, more dif- 
ficult than all, with William H. Seward, supported 
as he was by one of the most astute of all American 
political managers, Thurlow Weed. Several men 
in Lincoln's immediate group of friends and advo- 
cates had at the right time secured formal permis- 
sion for the use of his name as a presidential candi- 
date, and when the Republican State Convention 
met at Decatur on the 9th and 10th of May, it was 
well understood that Illinois would have a " favor- 
ite son ' ' at Chicago, and that he would be no other 
than Abraham Lincoln. 

1 ''Speeches," Vol. I, pp. 631, 633. 



140 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

When Lincoln entered the hall there were wild 
demonstrations of enthusiasm. The cheering was 
prolonged for several minutes, reaching its height 
when John Hanks and another old farmer were an- 
nounced, each carrying upright a fence rail which 
he and Lincoln had split from the walnut logs 
thirty years before. Accompanying them was a 
banner upon which was inscribed, " Abraham 
Lincoln, the rail candidate for the presidency in 
1860. Two rails from a lot of 3,000 made in 1830, 
by John Hanks and Abe Lincoln, ty hose father was 
the first pioneer of Macon County." Decatur being 
in Macon County, and near the place at which 
Thomas Lincoln settled when he came into Illinois 
from Indiana, Hanks, with or without prearrange- 
ment with the Republican managers, brought the 
rails to town to inject an object into the campaign 
which was strongly typical of the issue " between 
labor free and labor slave ; between democracy and 
aristocracy." 1 It directed attention in an unmis- 
takable way to Lincoln's humble youth and the fa- 
cilities which are at the poorest man's hand under 
free institutions for advancement to places of the 
greatest eminence in the nation. The occasion in- 
vited a speech from the candidate. He could not 
say whether these were the particular rails which he 
had split, but he did know those which he and 
Hanks had made were u good, big, honest rails." 
Since the text had been suggested he dwelt a little 
of necessity upon the poverty of his early life ; but 
1 Heradon, p. 460. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 141 

never a demagogue who conceived that his fitness 
for the presidency, if fit he were, came from the fact 
that at one time in his career he had ploughed the 
soil or built fences, it is certain he had taken no 
part in the movement to bring forward the rail as 
the emblem of his canvass which it instantly be- 
came. 

At Decatur men were appointed as delegates to 
the convention at Chicago who were ardently de- 
voted to him personally. They were also of suf- 
ficient ability and experience in political manage- 
ment successfully to direct the movement for his 
nomination without which all the loyalty in the 
world could have been of little avail. The list was 
made out with care by Lincoln's friends, who re- 
tired from the hall for the purpose, while lying on 
the grass in a neighboring grove, it having first 
been submitted for the approval of their chief. 
The Republican national convention met a week 
later on the 16th of May. By that time events 
which were distinctly reflected in the Charleston 
convention had effected a division in the Democratic 
party. Separate Northern and Southern candidates 
were now inevitable. If secession, resistance and 
civil war were not now definitely foreshadowed, it 
was tolerably clear that the candidate who should 
be nominated in Chicago for president would be 
elected, should wisdom be displayed in his choice, 
and that he, upon taking the office, would be con- 
fronted by the greatest problem which had ever 
confronted a chief magistrate of the republic. 



142 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Each state in the Union which maintained a Ee- 
publican organization contributed its quota of dele- 
gates, and while Lincoln himself had earlier pro- 
fessed some unconcern as to the place at which the 
nominating body should convene, it was to his 
unquestioned advantage that the meeting would be 
held upon friendly ground. The sympathies of the 
newspapers were expressed in the inscriptions upon 
their banners hung prominently over the street : 
" For President, Abraham Lincoln." The old rails 
came up from Decatur with the delegates sworn to 
the splitter of them for the head of the national 
ticket, and illuminated by tapers and decorated 
with flowers by lady admirers, they were a kind of 
Eepublican shrine so long as the convention lasted, 
at the hotel where the Illinois delegates made their 
headquarters. The delegates met in a great tem- 
porary frame structure called the " Wigwam," 
specially erected for their use. It would accommo- 
date probably ten thousand persons, less than the 
number which presented themselves for admission 
to its doors as active participants in the deliber- 
ations or as spectators and claqueurs for the rival 
candidates. 

That William H. Seward, the polished philoso- 
pher of the anti-slavery movement, the first and 
last choice of New York and other states, would be 
his party's nominee for president was the confident 
expectation of that gentleman and the well disci- 
plined body of men who came to Chicago to bring 
about that object. He had been governor of New 



NOMINATED FOE THE PBESIDENCY 143 

York and was then serving his second term in the 
United States Senate. He was well known and 
generally trusted and admired. Like Lincoln he 
was of Whig antecedents but unlike Lincoln he had 
been in the public eye for so many years and upon 
so many issues that he had unavoidably created an- 
tagonisms which exerted an influence against him 
greater than he had calculated. His clans and 
cohorts came to Chicago in so much confidence and 
with so uncompromising a determination to carry 
back the prize, that instead of conciliating opposi- 
tion elements, the antipathies were increased. That 
Ohio would vote for Chase, Pennsylvania for Cam- 
eron, Missouri for Bates and New Jersey for Day- 
ton, was very well understood and that their dele- 
gates would turn, either to Seward as the East 
thought or to Lincoln as the West thought, after the 
first ballot, was also a matter very clear to discern- 
ing men. They were the two real candidates be- 
fore the convention, as events disclosed, when the 
assembly selected its officers, heard the inevitable 
speeches upon the issues, adopted the platform, and 
upon the third day proceeded to the work of ballot- 
ing for a candidate for president. 

Seward remained at' his home in Auburn while 
Lincoln contented himself at Springfield. When he 
was asked if he intended to go to Chicago the latter 
replied : "I am a little too much of a candidate to 
go and not quite enough of a candidate to stay 
away ; but upon the whole I believe I will not go." 
He tossed ball in his garden to allay the fever of 



144 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

anxiety as the convention took up the work which 
was of such decisive importance to him, to the 
party and to the nation. 

From the time the delegates reached the city un- 
til the nomination was made, the retinues of the 
rival candidates practiced not a little amusing 
chicanery which has by this time become very 
characteristic of political conventions in the United 
States. Mr. Seward's followers, as has been said, 
regarded the selection of their matchless leader as 
in some senses a foregone conclusion. They occu- 
pied the streets with their bands of music and 
marching men, jostled the Illinoisians in the hotels 
and packed the convention hall with their claque. 
Lincoln's friends aimed to retort in kind. One 
evening William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania spoke 
for hours against time, until the great crowd in the 
hall should in sleepy exhaustion leave their seats 
and go to their homes in spite of loud demands 
that he should sit down and give the Seward men 
an opportunity to be heard. 1 Kelley was as volu- 
ble as he was obdurate and thus Thurlow Weed's 
men were outwitted at one point. 

The Lincoln leaders gained their next advantage 
in a " still hunt" for men accomplished in yelling 
and whooping, which it was conceived might be- 
come a very important factor in the work of secur- 
ing the nomination. On the first day of the con- 
vention it was discovered that the Seward forces 
were distributed over the hall, with a view to pro- 
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. 255. 



l a 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY 145 

ducing ungodly clamor and noise whenever the 
Dame of their leader was pronounced on the plat- 
form. Therefore Lincoln's friends put their heads 
together, and having knowledge of a Chicago man 
whose voice by reputation could " drown the roar 
of Lake Michigan in its wildest fury," could be 
heard indeed it was said "on a calm day across 
that lake," he was directed to report to the Repub- 
lican headquarters for immediate duty. There 
must be another. One of the Lincoln men knew a 
Dr. Ames whose voice was widely famed for its re- 
markable power. He, although a Democrat and 
not a resident of Chicago, was telegraphed for and 
reaching the city on the first train, was taken into 
the committee's employ. Ames and his colleague 
were instructed to organize secretly from such ma- 
terial as could be found in the city, two bodies of 
men to cheer and "hollow." The groups were 
seated upon opposite sides of the ' ' Wigwam, ' ' and 
at a signal, the flaunting of a handkerchief in the 
hands of a Lincoln man on the platform, were to 
emit a shout that would raise the roof from the 
hall. The signals were frequently given and the 
response was so lusty and disconcerting that the 
tide of enthusiasm was turned toward Lincoln un- 
mistakably. Ames it is related became so much 
addicted to shouting for Lincoln that he was unable 
to stop, joined the Republican party and later re- 
ceived his reward in the shape of a country post- 
niastership. 1 

1 Arnold, p. 167. 



146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

On the third day of the convention Seward's 
men made a tactical mistake, and paraded the 
streets with their banners and bands which played 
"O! isn't he a darling," and other appropriate re- 
frains, at a time when Lincoln's followers were 
shrewdly filling the seats in the " Wigwam." The 
New Yorkers arrived only to find all the desirable 
places occupied. 

When the moment came for the presentation 
of names of candidates to be nominated by the 
convention for president of the United States, 
William M. Evarts, who led the New York dele- 
gation, rose in behalf of Mr. Seward. Norman 
B. Judd of Illinois nominated Abraham Lincoln, 
and leaders of the delegations from other states 
who came instructed to cast their votes for favorite 
candidates rapidly followed, with Dayton, Chase, 
Cameron, Bates, Collamer and McLean. Indiana 
seconded Lincoln's and Michigan Seward's nomina- 
tion. The cheering was tumultuous for both the 
leading candidates. Even Illinois' well directed 
claques found it a troublesome task to drown the 
cheering and applause which Seward's name 
evoked. The waving of hats and handkerchiefs, 
stamping, clapping and screaming have been de- 
scribed by many witnesses of this thrilling scene, 
but the balance in noise seems to have rested on 
the side of the Lincoln men after the u concen- 
trated shriek," with which they concluded their 
historic demonstration. ' 

1 Halstead, " Conventions of 1860," p. 145. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY L47 

On the first ballot Seward had 1733 and Lincoln 
102 votes, Cameron leading the minor candidates 
with fifty and one-half votes. Seward had been 
supported by the entire New York delegation with 
seventy votes, and received all or practically all Un- 
votes of Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Cali- 
fornia and Minnesota. He fell far short of what 
his managers had hoped for him, especially in the 
New England States, which contributed as many as 
nineteen votes to Lincoln's total on the first ballot, 
to swell the support undividedly accorded the 
western candidate in Illinois and Indiana. 

Those who desired Seward's defeat, saw in this 
initial test of the strength of the leaders the certain 
triumph of Lincoln. He was the one man upon 
whom the opposition might unite, and amid deafen- 
ing shouts for a second ballot the delegates who had 
thrown away upon ' ' favorite sons, ' ' rushed to the 
Illinoisian. Pennsylvania turned to Lincoln almost 
solidly. Ohio, which was expected to j oin Seward' s 
standards, never cast a vote for him upon this or 
any other ballot. Lincoln now had fourteen votes 
from that state and thirty -six from New England. 
The result of the second ballot was — Seward 184*, 
and Lincoln 181, the first gaining eleven votes 
while the latter had won seventy-nine. 

Upon the third ballot, which proceeded amid 
breathless excitement in all parts of the hall, Lin- 
coln captured eight votes in New Jersey, nine in 
Maryland, and fifteen that he did not have before 
in Ohio, increasing his poll from all sources to 



148 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

23H, while Seward's stood at 180. Only one and 
one-half votes were needed for a choice. The con- 
test was at an end. Four more Ohio votes came to 
Lincoln, the change being announced by the leader 
of the state's delegation, a teller waved his tally 
sheet in the air and a cannon boomed the news to 
the crowd in the street, to the farmers at work in 
outlying fields, and to the sailors before the mast on 
the lake. There was general changing of votes ; 
delegation after delegation strove to put itself on 
record on the victorious side. Mr. Evarts in a 
voice that but imperfectly concealed the disappoint- 
ment felt at that moment by all of Mr. Seward's 
friends, remarkable for their devotion and loyalty, 
moved to make the nomination unanimous. 

It was a bitter reverse for that, as it considered 
itself perfect organization, the New York ' ' ma- 
chine," and the telegraph carried an unwelcome 
message to Mr. Seward as he awaited the result of 
the contest at his home at Auburn. One who sat 
at the same table with Thurlow Weed while the 
third ballot was beiDg taken says he was so visibly 
affected that he was obliged to press his fingers 
to his eyelids to keep back the tears. One New 
York delegate more philosophic and humorous than 
the rest, General Nye, afterward a senator from 
Nevada, suggested that the " Sucker Boys" should 
go to Albany and give Weed a few lessons in poli- 
tics. But compliments from the Seward side were 
for the time being sparingly bestowed. 1 The East 
1 Arnold, p. 168. 



NOMINATED FOP, THE PKESIDENCY 149 

generally doubted the expediency of the nomination, 
and college graduates and men of culture and re- 
finement, representative of the dignity as well as 
the conscience of the older states, could ill conceal 
their distrust of a candidate who at once came 1 < > 
be designated as the Illinois Eail Splitter. He was 
not well known on the Atlantic coast. The tour of 
the Eastern states which Lincoln had made in the 
interest of Zachary Taylor in 1848, had been the 
cause of his meeting Governor Seward and Thurlow 
Weed, but the latter, when reminded of the cir- 
cumstance, did not recall it in 1860. l That cam- 
paign, therefore, cannot have created a very deep 
impression upon the public mind. It is true that 
he had spoken to national audiences in the debates 
with Douglas in 1858, but it was after all a very 
faint echo of the contest which penetrated the East. 
Even the metropolitan journals of that day received 
but an insignificant amount of news by the " mag- 
netic telegraph," and little space was at the dis- 
posal of the editor for speeches, save those by local 
political leaders. The tour that led him to New 
York and New England in the early months of 
1860, had resulted in the excellent Cooper Institute 
speech and several addresses in New England of 
doubtful value to his reputation. As well received 
as he was upon his visit in February, the number 
of people who heard his voice was not large, and 
while many more became acquainted with him by 
a reading of the reports of his meetings in the news- 
1 Weed, " Autobiography, " Vol. I, p. 603. 



150 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

papers, this audience in proportion to the whole 
number of men who went to make up the electorate 
in the North Atlantic and New England states, was 
plainly very small. The impression prevailed in 
wide circles that a man who had been a rail splitter, 
and whose qualifications were uncertain, had been 
nominated as a candidate for president in preference 
to a leader of tried and unquestioned ability and 
worth, known for his polished manners and schol- 
arly attainments. 

Nevertheless the East, particularly Pennsylvania, 
then a pivotal state, holding that place of supreme 
importance in deciding presidential elections, since 
occupied by New York, had joined hands with the 
West in giving Lincoln the nomination. Seward 
was the author of too many utterances which made 
him appear unavailable at the time when the Ee- 
publican party hoped to elect its candidates, if it 
should act wisely. The fact that Lincoln was ear- 
nestly supported from the first by the delegates from 
the border states indicates that he was regarded as 
a conservative man on the Southern question. It 
was thought that those who professed a great 
dread of negro equality, one of the strongest 
factors in the campaign among voters of the 
unthinking sort, a very numerous body as is 
known by every student of democracies, would 
prefer Lincoln to Seward. A New England candi- 
date would have been wholly out of the question. 
Such a nomination would have implied a sectional 
purpose from the beginning which would have been 



NOMINATED FOR THE PEES LDENCY 1 5 1 

impolitic to the last degree. New York wasstronglj 
tinged with the hated taint of New England Aboli 
tionisni in the view of the South, and while there 
was no expectation of carrying the slave holding 
states for the Republican ticket, it was necessary to 
have the most careful regard which was at all con- 
sistent with the propagation of Republican princi- 
ples for the popular sentiment in states still by no 
means ready to assume a radical attitude on the 
great issue dividing the two portions of the Union. 
A candidate to stand for the growing, changing 
West, such as Lincoln, was a x>ressing need of the 
Republicans of 1860, in whose veins coursed any 
of the prescience of opportunism. 

Lincoln's strength lay in his very obscurity. 
What his opinions were in so far as they had not 
been expressed in the Lincoln -Douglas debates of 
1858, and the Ohio speeches of 1859, which were 
circulated in pamphlet form might be conjectured, 
but they could not be definitely known. Seward, 
on the other hand, had been speaking for many 
years in Congress, and no campaign passed that he 
was not actively employed upon the stump in a 
state whose newspapers were more efficient than 
those of any other part of the country. If a " rail 
candidate" were not likely to awaken the en- 
thusiasm of New York or New England, those states 
could be depended upon to support the nominee, 
as against a Democrat, whoever he might be. The 
states it was important to secure in 1860 were N< i w 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, all of 



152 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

which had given their electoral votes to Buchanan 
in 1856. There were great bodies of men upon the 
frontiers, and indeed in every part of the country, 
whose lives had been humbly begun and were 
humbly led. The fence rail was with them a better 
symbol than a college parchment and the knowl- 
edge of the world's polished literatures and phi- 
losophies. The American electorate since John 
Adams' day had not proven itself very friendly in a 
test case to aristocrats, and in Lincoln was found a 
democrat more truly democratic than any candi- 
date who in this campaign would carry that attract- 
ive name. 

The "cotton barons," the "cavalier race" and 
other titles commonly applied to the Democrats of 
the South, who wished to make their influence per- 
petually predominant in giving character to their 
party, were not suggestive of democracy. Nor did 
the arrogant, lordly air of Douglas to be the leader 
of the northern Democrats in the canvass against 
Lincoln, speak eloquently of that simplicity and 
rough disrespect of pretense and form which were 
the boast of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. 
A senatorial candidate who was received in Ottawa 
for the first joint debate with Lincoln in 1858, amid 
such ceremonies as these, could not very strongly 
impress the people with a sense of his democracy. 
"Judge Douglas, the great champion and the 
invincible defender of the rights, liberties and 
institutions of a free people," writes a witness in 
reporting this debate, " was met at the city of Peru, 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY L53 

sixteen miles distant, by the committee in an ele- 
gant carriage, drawn by four splendid horses, and 
brought to Ottawa. Four miles out he was met by 
a delegation composed of several hundreds bearing 
flags and banners, and escorted into the city amid 
the booming of cannon, the shouts of thousands and 
the strains of martial music. He came like some 
great deliverer, some mighty champion who had 
covered himself with imperishable laurels and 
saved a nation from ruin." l There was not among 
the candidates of 1860 one whom any American 
desirous of thinking himself a Democrat in deed as 
well as in theory could so consistently support as 
the man nominated on May 18th in the Wigwam in 
Chicago. 

On the evening of that day after having chosen 
Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, as the candidate for 
Vice-President, a Republican of Democratic ante- 
cedents, in recognition of the fact that the new 
party was not rising solely in the ashes of Whiggery, 
the delegates departed upon the trains for their 
separate homes. "At every station where there 
was a village, until after two o'clock," says Mr. 
Halstead, " there were tar barrels burning, drums 
beating, boys carrying rails, and guns, great and 
small, banging away. The weary passengers were 
allowed no rest, but plagued by the thundering of 
the cannon, the clamor of drums, the glare of bon- 
fires and the whooping of boys who were delighted 
with the idea of a candidate for the presidency who 
1 Correspondence of Philadelphia Press, August 26, 1858. 



154 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

thirty years before split rails on the Sangainou 
Kiver." l 

On the following day Mr. Ashniun, the chairman 
of the convention, with a delegate from each state 
designated as a committee of the convention officially 
to notify Mr. Lincoln of his nomination, repaired to 
Springfield. The nominee had received the news 
over the telegraph wires at the editorial offices of 
a Springfield journal, and the people of the city had 
lired salutes, cheered him and shaken his hands as 
they pressed into his little home, so that he had 
reason to be well persuaded that he was the choice 
of the coin cut ion before Mr. Ashniun' s deputation 
had arrived. It came in a single passenger coach 
by extra train and reached the state capital on a 
Saturday evening, to find upon approaching the 
cottage one of Lincoln's sons perched on a gate- 
post. Inside the candidate awaited them with a 
pitcher of water, from which they were invited to 
regale themselves after the journey. He formally 
accepted the nomination in a little statement he 
had prepared lor the occasion, "deeply and even 
painfully sensible of tin' greal responsibility which 
is Inseparable from this high honor, — a responsi- 
bility which I COUld almost wish," he declared 
with suitable modesty, "had fallen upon some one 
of the far more eminent men and experienced states- 
men whose distinguished names were before the 
convention." 

i Balstead, " Conventions of 18(50, " p. 154. 



CHAPTEE VI 

ON TO WASHINGTON 

Very shrewdly studying the political situation 
Lincoln now became the silent Sphinx. The plot 
thickened all about him and the future grew more 
unclear as parties were rended and candidates mul- 
tiplied. The Democrats were divided into two great 
camps on the slavery question. The portion of the 
party in the South for which Douglas's doctrines 
were too moderate had a presidential candidate of 
its own in John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, 
upon whom was to fall the mantle of James 
Buchanan and the resigning administration, and 
the redoubtable senator from Illinois was left with 
only the North and the border states from which to 
secure those majorities that were necessary to him, 
if he were to leap into the presidential office and 
test the virtue of his theories as to the salvation of 
the Union by popular sovereignty with indifference 
to the right or wrong of slavery. There was be- 
sides the Constitutional Union parly which would 
ignore the question of slavery, nominating John 
Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Mas- 
sachusetts, for president and vice-president, a com- 
bination not inaptly called the kk Kangaroo Ticket," 
because its hind legs were the longest, a complimenl 
pointedly aimed at Mr. Everett. The Republican 



156 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

platform adopted at Chicago had been constructed by 
conservative men, with a full understanding of the 
declarations which might or might not be politically 
expedient. The essential reference to the slavery 
question was a denunciation of the effort to impose 
the Lecompton constitution upon Kansas and the 
assertion of the principle that no power, not even 
Congress itself, could establish and legalize slavery 
in the United States' territories. To this doctrine 
Lincoln subscribed, and to all appeals which reached 
him constantly at Springfield for a fuller statement 
of his opinions upon this and other issues his secre- 
tary, John G. Nicolay, forwarded politely worded 
declinations. He refused upon his own conviction 
of what was to his personal interest, and the best 
interest of the cause for which he stood, a view in 
which he was enforced by the counsel of his wisest 
friends. He resolved that during the campaign he 
would notice no calumny, correct no impression, 
no matter how false, and enlarge upon no previous 
utterance. When he did write it was briefly, the 
notes being usually marked "private" or " con- 
fidential" or both. Nearly always, however, ex- 
cept it be in the case of the attempt put forth to 
make him out a " Know Nothing," at which he was 
manifestly deeply stung, and either confirmation or 
denial would have meant offense to large bodies of 
voters, even his confidential letters counseled those 
who desired information as to his position in the 
canvass to consult the Eepublican platform or 
study his published speeches. "Those who will 



ON TO WASHINGTON 157 

not read or heed what I have already publiclj 
said," he wrote to Mr. Speer in October, "would 
not read or heed a repetition of it. c If they hear 
not Moses and the prophets neither will they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead.' " 1 

In July he wrote to Hannibal Hamlin, with 
whose name his own during the canvass was being 
so closely linked: "It appears to me that you and 
I ought to be acquainted, and accordingly I write 
this as a sort of introduction of myself to you. You 
first entered the Senate during the single term I 
was a member of the House of Kepresentatives, but 
I have no recollection that we were introduced. I 
shall be pleased to receive a line from you." 
During the campaign several notes passed between 
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Hamlin, but at no time did 
the Eepublican candidate for President transgress 
the very wise rule for the guidance of his personal 
action to forbear for these five months from making 
public declarations. While not unmindful of the 
progress of affairs he consulted with few of the 
managers, and did not allow himself to be drawn 
into the conflict. He had removed his papers from 
the small office which he occupied with Mr. Hern- 
don to the governor's room in the State House, 
freely placed at his disposal, and here he directed 
such correspondence as he was willing to conduct 
and received multitudes of people from all parts of 
the Union who visited Springfield to press his hand 
and look into his face. 

« "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 652. 



158 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

As the campaign advanced the more certain 
seemed the victory. The opposition was hope- 
lessly divided. There were open threats of seces- 
sion in the South among the elements which were 
arrayed under the Breckinridge banner. Douglas 
had entered the canvass in person, speaking North 
and South and waging such a campaign as no 
presidential candidate has waged either before or 
since. He was dealing blows right and left against 
Breckinridge on the one hand and Lincoln on the 
other. In his own success was the only safety for 
the Union. But his contest, valiantly as he was 
directing it, it was plain could avail nothing 
against the Bepublicans. He had become as Lin- 
coln predicted in 1858 the leader of a sectional 
party. 

The North had reached the point when it would 
temporize no longer with slavery and Southern 
territorial pretensions, and would accept no more 
compromises. Lincoln was looked upon as the 
embodiment of this conviction. The Abolitionists 
might in his silence regard him as one of them, the 
moderates who wished no violation done to the 
rights of the slaveholder in slave states, had his 
solemn declaration that he shared their opinions 
and the conservatives on the borders of the South 
were led to believe that the election of any man 
who was a native of Kentucky could not bring the 
country irreparable harm, and that he was no great 
" nigger lover" after all. In all places where men 
used axes to split rails, his name touched a respon- 



ON TO WASHINGTON 159 

sive chord in the American character without re- 
gard to his or anybody's view of the slavery 
question, and thousands upon thousands marched 
up and down the land in " Wide Awake" pro- 
cessions on horseback and on foot, arousing 
enthusiasm for the Republican candidate. The 
"Wide Awakes," the Republican vigiiants, seem 
to have sprung from a club formed at Hartford in 
February, I860, 1 during the Connecticut campaign 
in which Lincoln participated after the Cooper 
Institute speech. A small body of men in glazed 
caps and oilcloth capes, each carrying a pole upon 
his shoulder, at the end of which dangled a lighted 
petroleum can that distributed oil and soot re- 
gardlessly over the enthusiastic campaigner, es- 
corted him to his hotel and with this club 
as a model thousands of societies were formed, 
the young men of each village enlisting to 
travel hither and thither for service at political 
meetings. At the larger towns as many as 30,- 
000 marching men would congregate and file 
through the streets with torches and fence rails, and 
in not a few cases when they invaded Democratic 
strongholds, they were hooted and stoned by 
ruffians which added zest to the campaign, reach- 
ing at many places late in the year a very excited 
stage. 

The October states had given in their verdict, 
and the success of the Republican ticket in Penn- 
sylvania and Indiana afforded absolute assurance 
1 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. II, p. 285. 



160 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

of Lincoln's election in November. In several 
states, as in New York and New Jersey, the 
Douglas and Bell factions made an effort to fuse 
and divide the electoral votes, the movement avail- 
ing nothing except to give Douglas three votes in 
New Jersey which with nine from Missouri made 
up his entire complement. Bell carried Virginia, 
Tennessee and Kentucky securing thirty-nine 
electors. Breckinridge's total, seventy-two votes, 
was secured in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, 
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, 
North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. Lincoln 
was the choice of the people in all the free states 
except New Jersey, where the fusionists left him 
four electors, a total of 180 against 123 for the 
combined opposition, or a majority of fifty-seven 
in the electoral college. 

The South had met the fate which its farther 
sighted leaders had long anticipated ; it had been 
beaten in its race with the North through the 
colonization of free settlers in the West and North- 
west. Breaking with their allies in the North, who 
long gave them an artificial ascendency, on the 
question of acquiring new slave territory and ex- 
tending the domain in which negroes might be held 
as property, the Southern states were now ready to 
make a stand in their last ditch, secession, — asserting 
by armed force, if need be, their constitutional right 
to leave the Union they had joined as sovereign 
governments nearly seventy-five years before, and 
establish a separate confederacy. 



ON TO WASHINGTON 161 

Mr. Lincoln continued to enjoin upon himself 
the silence which became a man in his position in 
the interval which elapsed after his election in 
November till his inauguration in the ensuing- 
March. The position in which he was placed was 
aggravating to the limit of endurance, as he saw 
events multiply to magnify the tasks of his ad- 
ministration and threaten the nation with pro- 
longed civil strife. " I have not kept silence since 
the presidential election from any party wanton- 
ness or from any indifference to the anxiety that 
pervades the minds of men about the aspect of the 
political affairs of this country," he said in Feb- 
ruary. 1 "I have kept silence for the reason that 
I supposed it was peculiarly proper that I should 
do so until the time came when, according to the 
custom of the country, I could speak officially." 

His election was the signal for the coming to 
Springfield of politicians and place seekers of in- 
finite variety in their possible usefulness to him, 
in their claims upon the rewards which a victori- 
ous party has to bestow, and in their demands upon 
his time, patience and courtesy. Thurlow Weed 
soon appeared in the interest of Mr. Seward and 
New York state, and remained in the Illinois 
capital in conference with the president-elect for 
several days. There were arrangements entered 
into at Chicago by Judge David Davis, as Mr. 
Lincoln's personal representative at the national 

1 From his address in New York City, " Speeohes," Vol. I, p. 
687. 



162 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

convention, although the latter declined to recog- 
nize their binding force, by which he had seemed 
the votes of the delegates from Pennsylvania and 
other states. There were urgent demands and the 
most vigorous protests against Simon Cameron's 
appointment to the cabinet and Lincoln, after 
notifying him of his selection for the Treasury or 
War portfolio, repented of his action only finally 
to change his mind again and bring the Pennsyl- 
vania leader into his immediate group of political 
counselors. 

It was his clearly stated object in the constitu- 
tion of his cabinet to choose his advisers from 
among those leaders who were of best report in 
their respective sections as indicated by the esteem 
in which they were held in the Chicago convention. 
Thus it was that places were found for Seward, 
Chase and Bates. He wished to have the various 
sections properly represented. Thus it was that 
Welles was chosen for New England and Mont- 
gomery Blair was taken from Maryland as a com- 
pliment to the South, after seriously discussing the 
availability of leaders from more Southern states 
including Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. 

As his labors progressed in the choice of his 
leading advisers, the distribution of many varieties 
of smaller spoil and the preparation of his inau- 
gural address in a dingy back room of a small build- 
ing opposite the State House in the presence only 
of a copy of the constitution of the United States, 
Webster's "Reply to Hayne," Andrew Jackson's 



ON TO WASHINGTON L63 

"Nullification Proclamation" and Henry Clay's 
famous speech on the compromises of 1850, ' the 
situation grew steadily worse in the country at 
large. The doctrine that a state possessed the right 
to nullify a national law, and if need be secede from 
the Union to which it had given its adherence, 
when in its own good time separate existence would 
seem to be to its advantage, was no novelty in 
American politics. Whether or not this right 
existed was an open question in the minds of many 
sincere men. 

It is idle to cry "treason" and call men "trai- 
tors " for endeavoring to exercise power which upon 
study, conviction and traditional understanding 
they believe to be just and constitutional. Affairs 
had come to this unhappy pass in this coun- 
try in 1860 because of the great doubts felt in 
the South and shared by many in the North 
as to the proper view of the constitution, be- 
cause too of the most natural disinclination to begin 
what proved to be, as not a few foresaw, a costly and 
destructive fratricidal war. Mr. Buchanan, who 
as " Old Buck " and " Uncle Jimmy," was spoken 
of only patronizingly, if not in execration, for his 
policies, which were plainly a confession of ignorance 
of what he could and should do rather than of 
senility and moral turpitude, was still in the 
president's chair. It is often said that by follow- 
ing the illustrious example of Andrew Jackson, he 
could have stamped out every vestige of secession. 

1 Herndon, p. 478. 



164 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

That he could have attempted this is reasonably 
clear, but the mood of the South had undergone 
great change since Jackson's time, and coming 
through either Buchanan or Lincoln an expressed in- 
tention to hold the cotton states longer in the Union 
against their will, would have inevitably led to armed 
resistance. Whether Mr. Buchanan's hope to avert 
such a calamity was a great error of policy as it is 
generally regarded in the North, or not, he at that 
time voiced the sentiments of many who would have 
made any sacrifice for the peace and harmony of 
the two sections. In the cabinet the members, as 
a matter of course, selected their sides in the ap- 
proaching contest and a u conspiracy" was en- 
tered into, it is said, by the Secretary of War, Floyd, 
of Virginia, the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell 
Cobb, of Georgia and the Secretary of the Interior 
Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, to disrupt the 
government. 

Lewis Cass, nearly eighty years of age, Mr. Bu- 
chanan's Secretary of State, at length retired from 
the cabinet rather than be responsible for acts 
which were rapidly bringing things to a dangerous 
crisis. The army had been so placed with reference 
to any contemplated defense of the Southern forts, 
it was charged of Secretary Floyd, that he was con- 
victed by public opinion in the North of high 
treason. But of what did the proud army of the 
United States consist? Little more than 15,000 
men in a country of 31,000,000. The navy through 
Secretary Toucey, of Connecticut, who was reckoned 



ON TO WASHINGTON L65 

to be in league with his Southern associates in the 
cabinet, had been scattered to the four quarters of 
the earth when they should have been kept at hand 
for use upon the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Of 
seventy-two war vessels in the American service 
but two mustering twenty-seven guns were at home 
at this critical hour. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that warships do not usually cruise in the 
harbors and upon the shores of the country whose 
flag they bear. Mr. Sumner and others charged 
that the Treasury was plundered so that it could 
not meet even a small draft. Military stores and 
other material had been transferred from Northern 
to Southern states, with a view to weakening 
the Eepublicans should they resort to force. In 
short, no effort was spared to cripple the North in 
the pending contest, and far-reaching injury was 
done to the Union cause by secret machination and 
treachery. 

It is plain that much of the cause for this re- 
proach will disappear if regard is had for the 
Southern point of view. If any member of the 
cabinet believed sincerely that states had joined 
the Union to remain only so long as whim and ad- 
vantage should dictate, it would be violative of 
every known rule of human nature to expect them 
to prepare the government at Washington for a 
civil war. They contended that a state had a con- 
stitutional right to secede peacefully at will. Then 
what need of strengthening the other states for re- 
sistance? Their action implied no war. When 



166 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

the time was ripe they would quietly withdraw 
from the Union, appoiut commissiouers to adjust 
their claims with the Union, as South Carolina was 
prepariug to do, iu reference to custom-houses, 
forts, military stores and federal posts. Once it is 
granted that any part of the people of the nation 
held the view that the Union was a confederacy 
rather than a federation of states inseparably 
joined, vastly less odium must by the verdict of 
history attach to the action of the Southern mem- 
bers of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet. That president's 
message when Congress met in December was not 
notably Unionist or disunionist, although erring 
greatly on the side of the South. The document 
had been submitted for the approval of the very 
diverse elements of which his cabinet was composed. 
In the view of the London Times the paper com- 
pletely dissipated the idea that the inhabitants of 
the American states any longer "constituted one 
people " and the course of events in the South, par- 
ticularly in South Carolina, tended to confirm this 
opinion in widening circles of men. 

If the South could justly aver that many of the 
founders of the republic were advocates of the 
idea that a state might leave the Union when that 
Union became irksome to it, and that New Eng- 
land itself on an historic occasion contemplated 
cutting loose from the rest of the nation, the North 
had the advantage of the argument, when witnesses 
were sought among the Fathers on the plain moral 
issue of slavery. The Republicans were not in 



ON TO WASHINGTON L67 

doubt, as Lincoln had expressed the thought, that 
the organizers of the government had accepted 
slavery only as an evil which was ultimately to be 
extinguished. Washington wrote to .Robert Morris 
in 1786 that " there is not a man living w^ho wishes 
more sincerely than I do to see some plan adopted 
for the abolition of slavery." His disgust with 
the system was so great, he declared, that he did 
not intend to acquire another slave by purchase. 
Benjamin Franklin, in 1789, denounced the system 
as " an atrocious debasement of human nature. ' ' Oi* 
the struggle to maintain it, Jeiferson said that "the 
Almighty has no attribute which can take sides 
with us in such a contest," while Henry Laurens; 
of South Carolina, said that he "abhorred" it, 
George Mason, of Virginia, that it was an "infer- 
nal traffic," which had originated " in the avarice 
of British merchants" ; and Patrick Henry, whom 
Byron called our "forest-born Demosthenes," that 
"it is as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsist- 
ent with the Bible and destructive to liberty." 

The bitterness of feeling which had been growing 
more and more intense for a decade is almost past 
our later understanding. With Garrison and the 
Abolitionists at one extreme and Yancey and such 
secession hotspurs at the other, invective and epithet 
were hurled defiantly across the Mason and Dixon 
line. On the floor of Congress, slaveholders were 
gravely denounced for "bartering their own chil- 
dren," "dealing in the image of God," "buying 
and selling the souls of men," " making merchan- 



168 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

dise of the Holy Ghost," etc. The South replied 
in kind, in such terms as " Abolitionists," "con- 
temptible fanatics," u black Republican disunion - 
ists," "nigger lovers," and "Lincoln's hirelings," 
a name applied generally during the war to Union 
soldiers to indicate that they were not gentlemen 
and gentlemen's sons like the Southerners, fighting 
for their hearths and firesides, but German and 
Irish immigrants employed often as substitutes in 
the purlieus of Boston, Philadelphia and New 
York. The loyalty of the Southern women which 
has not been surpassed by anything ever recorded 
of the women of France, must be held to have been 
largely due to the well grounded impression that 
the Republicans were advocates of a civilization 
which would result eventually in the predominance 
in America of a mulatto race. Lincoln, because 
of his unfortunate personal appearance, was openly 
likened to a gorilla, and flowing in Mr. Hamlin's 
veins, it was popularly supposed there was a strong 
current of African blood. The Southern leaders 
disputed the charge that they were disunionists. 
It was the North they asserted, with President 
Buchanan as their witness, which by aggression 
and intolerable disregard for Southern rights and 
interests, had brought the country to its present 
very unhappy pass. 

BeDeath the brutal speech and vulgar thought 
which discreditably characterized men prominent 
in leadership upon both sides, there was some in- 
telligent appreciation here and there of the compli- 



ON TO WASHINGTON L69 

cated magnitude of the underlying issues. There 
were thousands and tens of thousands in the South 
who had not contemplated actual secession, and 
who, when the time came for that radical step, in- 
dulged in deep heart searchings as to the wisdom 
of so bold a course. Hesitating to follow the lead- 
ership of men who rashly urged this leap into the 
dark, they at length acceded in a rather half- 
hearted spirit, that months of war changed to stub- 
born determination. South Carolina is "too small 
for a republic and too large for a lunatic asylum," 
wittily observed one of the not too willing converts 
to the secession cause. The boys in the streets, 
when the new Confederate banner was unfurled 
with its seven stars instead of the thirty-four they 
had been accustomed to see, sang somewhat deri- 
sively, — 

" Flag of our country can it be 
That is all that's left of thee? " 

But that the North misunderstood the situa- 
tion, every true Southron was inwardly convinced. 
There were in his view two methods, one or other 
of which would be adopted to accomplish the ex- 
tinction of slavery. First there was the Garrisonian- 
Giddings-Lovejoy-John Brown method which con- 
templated the sending of emissaries among the 
slaves to incite them to murder and insurrection. 
The threats of the Abolitionists, said one writer, 
were uttered ' ' with the keen appetite for Southern 
blood which fiends only could feel." Secondly, 



170 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

there was the " Black Bepublican " method of Lin- 
coln and Seward, the "peaceful and constitutional 
method ' ' through the election of sectional candi- 
dates by sectional parties. It meant the prohibi- 
tion of slavery through amendment of the Constitu- 
tion, which could be effected in perhaps ten years, 
the annihilation of the capital invested in four 
million negro slaves, the paralysis of Southern 
agriculture, particularly cotton culture, the en- 
forced idleness of Southern lands, and the closing 
of manufactories of cotton yarns and cloths in many 
distant countries. The pecuniary loss in the slaves 
alone, reckoning them to have an average yalue of 
$600 each, would, it was computed, reach an approx- 
imate total of $2,500,000,000, and contingent losses 
would raise the total to $9,000,000,000. Famine 
and bread riots in England, multitudes of slaves 
released to pillage the Southern states, which would 
be inevitably followed by race wars and greater 
horrors than those disgracing the French Eevolu- 
tion, flitted through the minds of the planters. 
What if slavery had in it elements of wrong % It 
was a firmly established institution and an insep- 
arable feature of the Southern economic system, and 
could not be destroyed without the destruction of 
greater things. Emancipation with all that would 
follow in its train, would be a crime against the 
slave as well as the master. 

The Southern people vigorously denied that their 
slaves were cruelly treated, except in the unusual 
case of a bad master, which argued little against 



ON TO WASHINGTON 171 

the general system. It was quite unreasonable to 
suppose that an owner would neglect to care for his 
property, since it would yield him a decreased re- 
turn if it were not kept in good physical condition. 
The negroes were an inferior race of people, but as 
slaves in America they had been brought infinitely 
nearer the civilization which would qualify them 
for citizenship than they could have been by cen- 
turies of existence as wild men in Africa. 

Mrs. Trescott, the wife of President Buchanan's 
Assistant Secretary of State, spoke for many South- 
ern women when she told William H. Russell upon 
his visit to their Sea Island plantation in South 
Carolina, in 1861: "When people talk of my 
having so many slaves, I always tell them it is the 
slaves who own me. Morning, noon and night I 
am obliged to look after them, to doctor them and 
attend to them in every way." The people of the 
South were not disinclined to think that they were 
entitled to credit on St. Peter's balance sheet for 
feeding and clothing so many millions of creatures, 
and approached the subject in that spirit displayed 
to-day by great employers of free labor, who in the 
payment of wages sometimes regard themselves 
rather too arrogantly as benefactors of their kind. 

"Inhabiting a slave state from my earliest 
youth," wrote John Lewis Peyton, " I have no hes- 
itation in declaring that the Southern negroes were 
the least- worked, the best-fed, clothed and housed 
of any laboring population I have ever seen in any 
quarter of the globe, and I have no hesitation in 



172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

saying were the happiest and most contented class 
of people in any walk of life I have ever known. ' ' ' 
Lincoln's election was scarcely announced when 
the people of South Carolina, the home of Calhoun 
and Nullification, resolved to make good their threat 
to leave the Union. With public meetings, excited 
oratory, bonfires, a display of palmetto flags and the 
organization of volunteer militia companies, whose 
members called themselves " Lions," " Tigers" and 
" Scorpions," ordinances of secession were passed, 
and the state in December asserted that.it was again 
an independent republic, free of Federal control. 
This course had not been adopted without an ex- 
change of views with the governors and political 
leaders of other Southern states, and that South 
Carolina was not to stand alone was soon made 
manifest. She was followed within two months by 
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana 
and Texas, in the order named — all the cotton 
states. Some thirty Southern members of Congress 
united in a manifesto to their constituents asserting 
that the Eepublicans were " resolute in the purpose 
to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the 
South." They therefore recommended secession 
and the organization of an independent Southern 
confederacy. Senators and representatives were 
leaving Congress with mock heroic valedictory 
ceremonies, as their respective states voted them- 
selves out of the Union, and the disruption of the 
government went on apace. 

'Peyton, " American Crisis," Vol. I, p. 272. 



ON TO WASHINGTON 17.3 

Still there were suggestions of compromise, re- 
peated as Edward Everett said with a "melancholy 
assiduity.' ' A committee of thirteen had been ap- 
pointed in the Senate and a committee of thirty - 
three in the House to devise some means of avert- 
ing the impending disaster, and early in February 
a Peace Convention assembled in Washington with 
old ex-President Tyler as its presiding officer. Not 
even Clay, had he come back to life, could avail to 
pacify the sections any longer. Forty years had 
elapsed since the compromise over Missouri ; forty 
weeks, perhaps forty days would not pass before 
armed blows would be struck to decide the issue 
which was now far past the stage of amicable ad- 
justment. The same day the Peace Conference met 
at Washington a convention of Southern delegates 
assembled at Montgomery, Ala., to adopt a consti- 
tution, elect officers and enact laws for the new con- 
federacy of the seceded states. 

Meantime, while many were bent upon regarding 
Lincoln as an Abolitionist, his inauguration day was 
rapidly approaching and he had yet made no state- 
ment which would indicate an intention to lead a 
destructive assault upon any of the cherished rights 
of the South. He had declared at a meeting in 
Springfield, called to celebrate his election, that 
"all American citizens are brothers of a common 
country and should dwell together in the bonds of 
fraternal feeling." He reassured a Kentucky 
Democrat by telling him that he would administer 
the fugitive slave law as honestly and fairly as 



174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Mr. Buchanan. 1 At one point he was firm and un- 
willing to make any concessions by way of concili- 
ation, and that was upon the territorial question. 
" Entertain no proposition for a compromise in 
regard to the extension of slavery," he wrote to 
Congressman Kellogg. 2 " The instant you do they 
have us under again ; all our labor is lost and 
sooner or later must be done over." Neither by 
popular sovereignty nor by any other device should 
hope be cherished of him or his administration re- 
garding the establishment of slavery in ground not 
already cumbered with it. He wrote to Alexander 
H. Stephens "for your own eye only," and asked : 
" Do the people of the South really entertain fears 
that a Republican administration would directly or 
indirectly interfere with the slaves or with them 
about the slaves ! If they do, I wish to assure you 
as once a friend, and still I hope not an enemy, that 
there is no cause for such fears. The South would 
be in no more danger in this respect than it was in 
the days of Washington." 3 What he would do 
with seceding states was not written in any of his 
speeches, as his arguments with Douglas had never 
led him into that field of discussion selected by 
Webster and Calhoun. To Thurlow Weed, how- 
ever, who represented the incoming administration 
in all practical ways in the East he expressed his 
opinion, for public use if it should be expedient, 

1 " Reminiscences of Lincoln," p. 317. 
2 Lincoln, "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 657. 
3 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 6G1. 



OK TO WASHINGTON 175 

"that no state can in any way get out of the Union 
without the consent of the others ; and that it is the 
duty of the president and other government func- 
tionaries to run the machine as it is." ' 

With a deep sense of the difficulty of his place 
he spoke so guardedly and so infrequently that by 
no chance could the course of events in the South 
be directly attributed to any statement of his ex- 
isting opinions or future designs. As the month 
of February advanced and inauguration day drew 
nigh Mr. Lincoln's friends and managers completed 
the arrangements for his journey to Washington, 
concerning which not a few public and private 
misgivings were expressed. Many states and cities 
contended for the distinction of entertaining the 
new president on his way to the national capital. 
Many invitations were of necessity declined but a 
tour sufficiently lengthy and circuitous was mapped 
out. The trip was to begin on February 11th. He 
requested his partner Mr. Herndon to let hang un- 
disturbed the old sign board on which his name so 
long had stood. "Give our clients to understand," 
he added, "that the election of a president makes 
no change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. If 
I live I'm coming back some time and then we'll 
go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever 
happened." 2 For the grand tour he was provided 
with special trains whose schedules of travel were 
very carefully arranged. They were preceded by 

1 "Speeches," Vol. I, p. 660. 

2 Herndon, p. 484. 



176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pilot engines to foil the machinations of con- 
spirators and efficient railway men left no detail 
unconsidered in their undertaking to transport him 
safely to the seat of government. In his coach 
were not only the members of his family and his 
private secretaries, but also a number of his trusted 
Illinois friends, including David Davis, Norman B. 
Judd and Ward Hill Lamon. A farewell to the 
people of Springfield was said from the rear plat- 
form to the crowd which had surrounded the train 
to witness its departure. A garbled report of the 
speech was sent far and wide over the country. 
Lincoln was made to say that he could not face the 
duties of his great office except with the knowledge 
that he was the object of the prayers of his old 
neighbors, which led many to predict that he would 
dismally fail, if success were hanging upon so 
slight a thread. 

From Springfield he passed to Indianapolis where 
he spoke to. the legislature of Indiana, then to 
Cincinnati where he made two speeches, one to a 
large assemblage presided over by the mayor and 
the other to a numerous body of Germans. At 
Columbus he spoke to the legislature of Ohio, and 
from the train addressed a crowd at Steubenville. 
A speech longer than any other delivered upon the 
tour, devoted not very happily to the tariff ques- 
tion, which he had never studied, was offered at 
Pittsburg. From that city he turned back into 
Ohio and visited Cleveland, thereupon proceeding 
to Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, 



ON TO WASHINGTON 177 

Troy, Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Peekskill, New 

York, Trenton, Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Ai 
all these places in the order named he delivered 
longer or shorter addresses for which in several 
cases he did not dismount froni the train. At 
Albany, Trenton and Harrisburg, he appeared be- 
fore the legislatures of New York, New Jersey and 
Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia he assisted at 
ceremonies attending the raising of a flag over 
Independence Hall. 

A more difficult task than the making of speeches 
at such a time in the existing state of public affairs 
with the eyes of the nation fixed upon him cannot 
easily be imagined, and Lincoln for the most part 
acquitted himself creditably, without yielding to 
boastful threat or a statement of his policies pre- 
maturely. His reply to the address of welcome at 
Indianapolis was one of the happiest of his utter- 
ances on the tour. In the course of this speech he 
said : "I wish you to remember now and forever 
that it is your business and not mine ; that if the 
Union of these states and the liberties of this peo- 
ple shall be lost it is but little to any one man of 
fifty two years of age, but a great deal to thirty 
millions of people who inhabit these United States, 
and to their posterity in all coming time. It is 
your business to rise up and preserve the Union 
and liberty for yourselves and not for me. I ap- 
peal to you again to constantly bear in mind that 
not with politicians, not with presidents, not with 
office seekers but with you is the question : Shall 



178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Union and shall the liberties of this country be 
preserved to the latest generations % ' ' 

In his address to the Assembly of New Jersey 
Mr. Lincoln awakened great enthusiasm in his 
audience, his utterances being interrupted by loud 
and prolonged cheering. He said: "The man 
does not live who is more devoted to peace than I 
am, none who would do more to preserve it ; but 
it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly. 
And if I do my duty and do right you will sustain 
me, will you not ? Received as I am by a legis- 
lature, the majority of whom do not agree with me 
in political sentiments I trust that I may have their 
assistance in piloting the ship of state through this 
voyage surrounded by perils as it is, for if it should 
suffer wreck now there will be no pilot ever needed 
for another voyage." 

How the plans for Lincoln's tour from Harris- 
burg to Washington were suddenly changed upon 
the advice of Pinkerton, the detective, and his men 
who had been employed to ferret out a conspiracy 
for the president's assassination in Baltimore, is a 
story that has often been told. Instead of proceed- 
ing to Washington directly from the capital of 
Pennsylvania, Mr. Lincoln was induced to return to 
Philadelphia, in which city, accompanied by only 
two men, the detective and his friend Mr. Lamon 
of gigantic frame, who was to be his faithful body- 
guard throughout the war as marshal for the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, he boarded a sleeping coach 
attached to a regular train and reached Washington 



ON TO WASHINGTON 17<> 

incognito before daylight on the morning of Febru- 
ary 24th, just thirteen days after setting out from 
Springfield. As the trio came from the train they 
were met by E. B. Washburne who was to have 
had the companionship at the station of Mr. 
Seward, but the latter did not appear until after 
they had reached Willard's Hotel. Thus it was 
that Mr. Lincoln entered Washington while all the 
world still believed that he had not yet passed 
through Baltimore. The deception involved in the 
change of program was not to Mr. Lincoln's 
liking, 1 but it seems to have been a wise precaution 
which may perhaps have been the means of pre- 
serving him to the nation that, severed and torn by 
divergent purposes, it was his immediate task to 
use his powerful offices to reunite. 

1 Lanion, " Recollections of Lincoln," p. 46. 



CHAPTER VH 

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 

Foe many years Washington had been the 
cynosure of the young eyes of brides and grooms, 
and not many honeymoons were allowed to pass 
over the heads of the happy youth of America, 
without a journey to the capital of their country. 
The city to the untraveled had a very grand ap- 
pearance. The time had gone to return no more 
when a president-elect could ride up for his in- 
auguration on horseback, and dismounting, tie his 
steed to a fence-paling. No more could the English 
poet sing of 

" The famed metropolis where fancy sees 
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees." 

But it is vain to assert that it was in any sense 
a capital which could be very favorably compared 
with the capitals of the great nations of Europe. 
Edward Dicey, who came here as the correspondent 
of a London newspaper during the war spoke of 
"the dark, ill-lit, ill«paved streets" of Washing- 
ton, and George Augustus Sala, who visited the city 
on a similar mission, said it was a "shinplaster in 
bricks and mortar with a delusive frontispiece of 
marble." With the capitol as its only important 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR l.si 

building it conveyed "a perplexed impression that 
the British Museum had suddenly migrated to the 
centre of an exhausted brickfield where rubbish 
may be shot," a city which doubtless one day would 
be " uproariously splendid but which at present 
isn't anything. It is in the District of Columbia 
and the State of the Future." 

To an American such utterances were thoroughly 
treasonable, but in truth it was to such a city that 
Lincoln had come to reside at a hotel until he should 
be inaugurated in a few days as the president of a 
Union from which seven states had seceded, to be 
followed in a little while in all likelihood by a half 
dozen more, to form altogether a Southern slave- 
holding confederacy, armed cap-a-pie to resist any 
attempt to call them back to their former allegiance. 

Mr. Lincoln's coming was the sign for a number 
of social interchanges which occupied the few days 
to elapse before he should take the oath of office. 
He made the customary calls upon the outgoing 
president and his Cabinet, to the two Houses of 
Congress and to the Supreme Court. President 
Buchanan and his ministers officially returned his 
visits and many members of the Senate, the House, 
and the famous Peace Conference whose sessions 
were then in progress, and individuals drawn to the 
city to be present at the turn of the tide of govern- 
ment were received in the parlors of his apart- 
ments. On inauguration day Mr. Buchanan called 
for him in an open carriage and they were together 
driven without untoward incident through the as- 



182 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sembled crowds to the capitol, where upon the 
east portico the oath was to be administered. In 
front were assembled literally acres of people who 
had come to witness the ceremonies, many of them 
in simple curiosity and with little friendliness, for 
the Washington of this time was distinctly Southern 
in its sympathies. Mr. Lincoln was attired in a 
spick-and-span new suit of black. He wore a high 
silk hat, carried a gold-headed cane and exhibited 
a bristling and unbecoming growth of black whisk- 
ers which he seemed to think would add to the 
dignity of his appearance. Cheers greeted him as 
he mounted the platform. He was introduced by 
his warm personal friend Senator Edward D. Baker 
of Oregon. As he rose to deliver his address, 
which had been carefully prepared at Springfield 
and revised, though in very unimportant respects, 
by William H. Seward since coming to Washington, 
he rather awkwardly sought a place for his cane 
which was finally deposited on the rough boards 
beneath the table, and his hat which Senator Doug- 
las stepped forward to take and held graciously 
throughout the proceedings. 

The address was in temper as conciliatory as any 
that could have been honestly made by a man of 
Mr. Lincoln 7 s inflexible principles. It was marked 
by no rash threat against the South. He pledged 
the Southern people under his administration the 
equal protection of the laws, specifically disclaiming 
any design to violate the rights of the states on the 
subject of slavery. As to the formidable attempt 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR L83 

in progress to effect a disruption of the Union, M r. 
Lincoln plainly declared that it rested upon a 
theory at variance with any defensible view of the 
American government. The Union he said was 
perpetual and ' ' no state upon its own mere motion ' ' 
can lawfully get out of it. "To the extent of my 
ability," he added, " I shall take care, as the con- 
stitution expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws 
of the Union be faithfully executed in all the 
states." In performing what he considered to be 
"only a simple duty," he promised that there 
should be no bloodshed or violence "unless it be 
forced upon the national authority." Property 
and places belonging to the government would be 
occupied and held. 

He saw and stated the true cause of the rupture 
between the sections, an issue which was later so curi- 
ously masked in England and among many classes 
at home. "One section of our country believes 
slavery is right and ought to be extended," Mr. 
Lincoln observed, "while the other believes it is 
wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the 
only substantial dispute. ' ' The commissioners from 
the South who had come to Washington to secure a 
division of property and the peaceful secession of 
their states were directly addressed when Mr. Lin- 
coln said : "The chief magistrate derives all his 
authority from the people and they have conferred 
none upon him to fix terms for the separation of 
the states. The people themselves can do this if 
they choose ; but the executive as such has nothing 



184 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to do with it. His duty is to administer the present 
government, as it came to his hands and to trans- 
mit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor." His 
conclusion, which was suggested by Mr. Seward, 
but is wholly the product of his own mind in all 
that pertains to the beauty and poetry of its form, 
has become one of the most celebrated passages in 
his writings : 

"I am loth to close. We are not enemies but 
friends. We must not be enemies. Though pas- 
sion may have strained it must not break our bonds 
of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretch- 
ing from every battle-field and patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone all over this 
broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union 
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the 
better angels of our nature." 

Chief Justice Taney, the author of the Dred Scott 
decision, rose and administered the oath. Douglas, 
who repealed the Missouri Compromise and pre- 
cipitated the troubles in Kansas which led to the 
formation of the Republican party, returned Mr. 
Lincoln's hat, and Buchanan, bowed with his years, 
the chief malefactor on the slavery side in the view 
of large sections of men in the North, under whose 
patronizing eye secessionist conspirators had de- 
veloped their plans to full fruition throughout 
months of drifting — awful drifting — accompanied 
him back to the White House. After the American 
manner Mr. Lincoln was now the undisputed pro- 
prietor of the mansion in which Mr. Buchanan had 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR L85 

made his home for four years, and that gentleman, 
returning to the ranks of citizenship from which he 
had sprung, wishing his successor, with half guilty 
irony, a peaceful and happy administration, de- 
parted the scenes of power to find repose upon his 
Pennsylvania estate. It was now President Lin- 
coln ; his policies were announced and publicly 
known, in so far as it was necessary or expedient in 
the present state of affairs for the public to know 
them. His words of conciliation were all that in 
his understanding of the character of the Union and 
the nature of his office under it, he could offer 
and the issue was in the hands of the Southern 
states. 

While most men were well persuaded that the 
South could not be recovered without war, very few 
had an adequate notion of the magnitude of the 
struggle upon which the nation was about to enter. 
No honeyed phrases or appeals to reason, memory 
or the prosier sentiments of expediency would now 
avail to win back the South, but the knowledge 
that a firm hand was at last at the helm of affairs 
exerted a useful influence to solidify the opposite 
section. The North hesitated to believe that the 
South seriously intended to leave the Union, even 
after several states had formally voted to secede. 
There was wide-spread doubt whether the Federal 
government had the right to coerce a state, and if 
it had that right, whether it might not much better 
decline to exercise it, especially since force, as it ap- 
peared, must be applied against a large group of 



186 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

states, indeed, an entire section of the Union. If 
they were determined in their course, would it not 
be merciful to let them go in peace, even though 
still denying the right of secession ? To shed the 
blood of brother white men, for three-quarters of a 
century closely bound together under a common 
nationality, to many minds seemed a vastly greater 
evil than the division of the republic into slave and 
free states. 

These sentiments, which were in the ascendant 
during the Buchanan administration, Lincoln came 
to dispel, though it is a result which was not 
quickly, or ever indeed while the war lasted, 
thoroughly accomplished, a fact that served at 
every point to complicate his task. Horace Greeley 
had been asserting in the New York Tribune that it 
was not conformable to the genius of republican 
institutions to coerce a state. The whole tone of 
New York city was far less strongly Unionist than 
is sometimes believed. 1 In prominent newspapers 
only mobs were competent to instil anything like 
salutary Union views. Business men had already 
felt the damaging effect of a division of the sections, 
and in a sordid spirit of self-interest which often 
possesses a commercial community, were willing to 
grant much to avoid the shock of civil war. They 
sold their goods in the South and received Southern 
merchandise in return. Even New England, which 
procured the material for its cotton spinneries in the 
Gulf states, was casting doubts upon the right or 
1 Kussell, " My Diary North and South," pp. 20, 355. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR L87 

expediency of arming to restore the Southern states 
to their affiliations. General Scott at the head of 
the army, one of the few officers of the government 
high in station, who had been accounted quite faith- 
ful to the Union interest, had in a weak moment 
brought up the question whether the " wayward 
sisters" might not better be allowed to " depart in 
peace" and both Mr. Chase 1 and Mr. Seward, who 
had passionate concern that the South should be con- 
ciliated, wavered when the time was at hand to 
turn the guns of one section against the people of 
the other. 2 Perhaps there were few men anywhere 
who did not in some parts of their being quail at the 
thought of a great fratricidal conflict, or would not 
to-day, if we should picture to ourselves a repetition 
of an attempt at disunion of such dimensions, hesi- 
tate to meet the military issues which a resolute 
policy would certainly invite. 

While Mr. Lincoln had begun the construction 
of his cabinet immediately after his election was 
assured by the news which reached him in the tele- 
graph office in Springfield on the night of Novem- 
ber 6, there were some places not yet filled when he 
arrived in Washington. It was a very difficult 
task in the state of the country, as he realized full 
well, to bring to his council men who would be 
truly representative of all the sections, interests and 
shades of factional opinion which could be made 
available for his use in consolidating Union feeling 

Russell, "Diary," p. 355. 

2 Welles, " Lincoln and Seward. 7 ' 



188 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

for the test of strength between North and South, 
now only too imminent. Mr. Seward was marked 
out for the State Department on many accounts. 
Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, earlier a Democrat, 
widely respected for his honesty and integrity, was 
brought into the cabinet to be Secretary of the 
Treasury. Simon Cameron was appointed to the 
War Department against the strongest protests, and 
only after the president-elect convinced himself 
that on balance he would offend more by refusing 
than by acceding to the request, for such a recogni- 
tion of the Pennsylvania party leader. Gideon 
Welles of Connecticut was invited to be the repre- 
sentative for New England as Secretary of the Navy, 
although Seward said he did not know the stem of 
a boat from its stern, while Caleb B. Smith of In- 
diana as Secretary of the Interior, Edward Bates of 
Missouri as Attorney-General, and Montgomery 
Blair of Maryland as Postmaster-General, chosen 
at the last moment as an additional pledge of the 
administration's just purposes toward the Demo- 
crats and its sympathy, consistent with the preser- 
vation of the Union with the Southern people, com- 
pleted the group of seven of which the cabinet then 
consisted. There were four Democrats, it was ob- 
served, and only three Whigs in his council room, 
to which Mr. Lincoln responded that he was him- 
self an old-line Whig and he would be on duty " to 
make the parties even." 

It was a motley group which fell to pieces almost 
before it was firmly set upon its feet. The tariff 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR L89 

men in Pennsylvania distrusted Chase because of 
his supposed proclivities in favor of free trade, and 
Seward himself, about whom all the tasks and re 
sponsibilities of government, in the view of many 
people, would cluster and revolve, disliked the 
combination so cordially that he announced his 
intention of getting out of it. He declared that he 
would not serve with Mr. Chase, whereupon Mr. 
Lincoln with that determination which character- 
ized him at critical moments, said he would ap- 
point Mr. Dayton of New Jersey to be Secretary of 
State, and send Mr. Seward to England. 2 To the 
president's request that his action should be re- 
considered, Mr. Seward acceded, 2 and thus a min- 
istry was constituted as unstable as any that has 
marked the history of the cabinet system in France, 
held together only by a sense of necessity and the 
presiding genius of him who was its ever firm, tact- 
ful and forgiving chief. 

The new president almost immediately turned his 
attention to the relief of the Southern forts, partic- 
ularly those overlooking Charleston, where the 
temper of the people was such that the sight of a 
United States flag was a signal for some unfriendly 
act or insolent remark. Again and again was the 
proposal made to reenforce these posts during the 
closing months of the Buchanan administration, and 
Mr. Lincoln was at once confronted with the same 
problem. Major Anderson in command of the lit- 

1 Lamon's "Recollections." 

9 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. Ill, pp. 3T0, 371. 



190 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

tie garrison at Fort Sumter was isolated, and it was 
calculated that his supply of provisions would 
shortly be exhausted when he must capitulate and 
turn over another piece of Federal property to the 
Confederacy. The first time the question was 
brought before the new cabinet, the members were 
quite generally in favor of an abandonment of the 
fort. Another course, some of Mr. Lincoln's lead- 
ing advisers declared, would immediately provoke 
a war which by unchanging pursuit of a policy of 
conciliation might still be averted. 

The president was incessantly vigilant. He de- 
spatched to Charleston his friend Lamon, who had 
accompanied him to Washington from Illinois as 
an unofficial delegate to spy the ground and dis- 
cover, if he could, what was the real state of feeling 
in South Carolina and how it fared with Anderson 
in the fort. With Lamon went S. A. Hurlbut of 
Illinois, but of Charleston birth, to visit his friends 
and relations in South Carolina, similarly delegated 
to report his observations, especially as to the 
strength of the Union party in the Palmetto State. 
Captain Fox who had a plan to u run the batteries " 
and relieve Sumter also made a hurried visit of in- 
spection. All the emissaries from Yankeedom 
were accorded certain courtesies by the officers of 
the government of South Carolina, who were bent 
upon avoiding any act which would have the ap- 
pearance, in their own view at least, of striking the 
first blow. 

Lamon in spite of his great size was nearly 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR L91 

hanged by a mob of hotspurs in slouch hats with 
their trousers tucked in their boots, — profane, spit- 
ting maj ors and brigadiers by self-appointment , who 
were everywhere taking control of the streets, 
hotels, public buildings and railway stations in the 
South. 1 His report upon his return to Washington 
did little to reassure the president. Although new 
to his office, unacquainted with his ministers and 
they unacquainted with him, the necessities of the 
case resulted in a rapid formulation of his policies. 
Mr. Lincoln had never sacrificed anything of his 
determination to do what he could to protect 
Federal property, and he was at no time unmindful 
of Major Anderson's situation. At its next meet- 
ing the sentiment of the cabinet had undergone 
material change, and expeditions early in April 
were organized secretly, under direction of the 
president, to repair hastily to the Southern coast, 
one to the relief of Fort Sumter, the other to Fort 
Pickens, guarding the entrance to Pensacola harbor 
which was also in distress. 

Before Captain Fox was enabled to reach Sumter, 
because of a storm and an unhappy conflict of 
orders, although some of his vessels were in a posi- 
tion outside the bar to signal to Major Anderson in 
the fort, the crisis was reached. Choosing to re- 
gard Fox's earlier visit as a violation of the agree- 
ment under which he was allowed safe passage to 
and from the garrison, aud acting upon orders from 
the central Confederate agents at Montgomery, who 
1 Lamon. "Reminiscences," and Russell, "Diary." 



192 ABRAHAM LINCOLK 

knew perfectly of the measures taken for the fort's 
relief, General Beauregard, after duly informing 
its commander of his intentions if evacuation were 
not immediately made, began the attack at day- 
light on the 12th of April, 1861. Long offended by 
the presence of a Union flag in their harbor, the 
Charlestonians left their beds in glee and crowded 
the wharves and shipping to witness the early 
morning assault. Anderson and his little handful 
of men, reduced to pork and water, replied to the 
fire throughout Friday, the 12th, and were able to 
resume on the following day, though without men 
enough to handle but a small part of the whole 
number of guns or an adequate supply of cartridges. 
The wooden buildings were set on fire by red-hot 
shot, so that the men were nearly stifled with smoke 
and in danger of the explosion of the powder maga- 
zine. At one o'clock of the afternoon of the second 
day the flagstaff was shattered and the falling of 
the banner was taken to be a signal of surrender 
leading to the historic charge of that picturesque 
secessionist fire-eater, Senator Wigfall, in a boat with 
a handkerchief tied to a sword as a flag of truce. 
By Saturday evening the terms of capitulation were 
arranged, and on Sunday, April 14th, Anderson and 
his men, transferred to one of the United States re- 
lief boats, were sailing northward, the heroes of the 
first engagement of the war. 

Although the South Carolina gunners had fired 
upou the Star of the West, a merchant steamer 
which in January had made the attempt to enter 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR VX1 

Charleston harbor and bring relief to the belea- 
guered garrison, and a schooner bearing the Amer 
ican flag loaded with ice for Savannah, which by 
chance had come into range in March, suspected of 
a like mission, was forced to beat a hasty retreat by 
shots from the Confederate batteries, it needed the 
carefully planned assault upon Fort Sumter to 
arouse the North to a sense of the reality of the ap- 
proaching conflict. The bombardment of a United 
States fort, the attack upon the American flag pro- 
longed throughout two days, even though mollified 
by polite offers to the garrison of surgeons and fire 
engines, filled the people as by an electric charge 
with patriotic ardor. 

The issue was now at hand in military form. 
Lincoln, while Sumter was still under fire, told a 
committee of Virginians that he would use every 
effort to hold government property within the 
boundaries of the seceded states, retake posts that 
had already been or should in future be seized, — in 
short to the extent of his ability he would " repel 
force by force. ' ' The news of the fort 7 s capitulation 
was the signal for a call for 75,000 militiamen for 
three months' service, and for an extra session of 
Congress, to meet on the 4th of July. Through 
newspapers, public meetings and every variety of 
agency employed in translating public opinion, 
expression was given to the fixed determination of 
the Northern people to defend the Union with their 
lives. Each village green became a mustering 
ground for companies of volunteers, and even the 



194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

children were carrying toy muskets and tin swords 
in the playgrounds adjoining Northern school- 
houses. Senator Douglas visited the White House 
and pledged his influence on the side of the Union, 
sending out over his signature a statement which 
had almost the power of command to his great 
following. This act assisted greatly in defining the 
position of the Democrats, lowered the hopes of the 
secessionists, many of whom saw a great Southern 
party in the North just as Seward discerned the 
traces of a formidable Union party in the opposite 
section, and early gave practical guarantee that the 
war was not to be by Republicans for Republicans, 
but by all loyal Unionists for the preservation of 
the Union, however their ballots may have been 
cast at the polls in 1 860. 

The requisitions for troops went out to the gov- 
ernors of many states, which it was clearly under- 
stood would not respond to the call. From the 
border slave states replies came promptly, indi- 
cating that in the impending struggle their sym- 
pathy would be with South Carolina and the other 
1 ' cotton republics. ' ' Jefferson Davis issued a proc- 
lamation on April 17th inviting applications for 
letters of marque and reprisal by which he hoped to 
fit out fleets of privateers to ravage the commerce 
of the Northern states, and Lincoln two days later 
replied with a proclamation blockading the South- 
ern coasts and declaring that privateers when cap- 
tured would be treated as pirates. Regarding 
military activity in the North as a movement to 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR L95 

"subdue" and "subjugate 7 ' the South, action in 
the words of the governor of Missouri which was 
" inhuman and diabolical," requiring the Southern 
people, as the governor of Arkansas observed, to 
" defend to the last extremity their honor, lives and 
property against Northern mendacity and usur- 
pation," the seven pioneers in secession were 
rapidly joined by other states. 

Virginia, avast empire stretching from the sea- 
board to the Ohio line, left the Union on April 
17th, although the secessionists were not able to 
deliver the entire state to the Confederacy. Its 
western mountain counties disavowed the action 
taken at Richmond and were formed into the 
separate loyal state of West Virginia. While 
Virginia was not concerned in the growth of the 
cotton plant, and therefore found no great profit in 
the ownership and management of slaves, she had 
become the breeding ground for negroes. J. E. 
Cairnes, the English economist, in his passages 
with Mr. McHenry on this subject, computed from 
reliable data that Virginia had bred and exported 
to the cotton states between the years 1840 and 1850 
no less than 100,000 slaves, which at $500 per 
head would have yielded her $50,000,000. The 
trade was of great importance to the people, and 
was of weighty influence in deciding the grave ques- 
tion of their sympathies in the pending struggle. 

Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina followed 
Virginia out of the Union in May and the Con- 
federacy might now claim to be a nation of con- 



196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tiguous area and diversified industries, with an 
important seacoast, great rivers, and a considerable 
population. Its inhabitants numbered about nine 
millions, of which it is true nearly four millions 
were slaves. Inferior as the negroes were accounted 
to be, they were to prove themselves invaluable 
allies while their masters were under arms on dis- 
tant military fields, and by their enforced service 
vastly contributed to the prolongation of the war. 
There yet remained the border slave states of 
Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, 
which were the scene of machination and counter- 
machination by Unionists and disunionists, but 
which nominally continued their loyal adhesion to 
the Union. Sending regiments to both armies, 
their populations divided in allegiance even 
as to neighborhoods and families, they were, in 
the early stages of the war at least, in the most 
unhappy situation. Besought to secede they yet 
resisted the movement and strove to maintain a 
position of neutrality. 

The accession of the four interior slave states, 
especially Virginia, greatly strengthened the reso- 
lution as it increased the material resources of the 
Confederate leaders. They determined to establish 
their capital at Richmond in close proximity to 
Washington. The area in secession was thus 
brought up to the very doors of the Federal capital, 
and President Lincoln, looking from the White 
House windows, could behold a Confederate flag 
flying at a staff upon a hotel six miles down the 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 1<>7 

river in Alexandria. This was the standard, in 
removing which young Ellsworth, the Zouave, 
earlier a law student in Lincoln's office in Spring- 
Held, and his companion upon several notable public 
occasions, lost his life in a dramatic way. There 
was good cause to fear for the safety of Washington 
itself, and the Southern people's failure to take 
advantage of the opportunity to seize the defense- 
less city must be ascribed to their own unreadiness 
for the war and their indisposition to conduct it 
offensively. They seem still to have deceived them- 
selves in the thought that they would be allowed to 
go peaceably, at any rate until they were informed 
of the unparalleled activity in the North in re- 
sponse to President Lincoln's call for troops and 
the actual arrival in Baltimore of regiments on their 
way to the Federal capital. 

It was firmly believed by many Southern men 
that Maryland would follow Virginia, in which 
case Washington would have been secured and 
very likely all the Western and Northern states, ex- 
cept New England. 1 "There was a ferocity in the 
Southern mind toward New England," W. H. Eus- 
sell observed while on his tour of the newly formed 
Confederacy in the interest of the London Tunes, 
" which exceeds belief." Every effort was put 
forth to capture Maryland for the Confederacy, and 
the first regiment of troops sent South in answer to 
the Federal requisition, the Sixth Massachusetts, 
was so severely abused by mobs when it reached 

1 Peyton, "American Crisis," Vol. I, p. 60. 



198 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Baltimore, that it was necessary for some time in 
future to take soldiers into Washington by way of 
Annapolis. " Maryland, my Maryland" became 
the battle song of the Confederacy. She was 
urged to 

" Avenge the patriotic gore 
That flecked the streets of Baltimore 
And be the battle queen of yore, 
Maryland, my Maryland." 

She would certainly rouse with these words iu 
her ears : 

"Lo! There surges forth a shriek 
From hill to hill, from creek to creek 
Potomac calls to Chesapeake, 
Maryland, my Maryland. 

" She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb. 
Huzza ! she spurns the Northern scum ; 
She breathes, she burns. She'll come, she'll come, 
Maryland, my Maryland." 

But Maryland did not come, though her Northern 
allegiance was for long not too secure. Her choice 
was hanging in the balance finally to become in the 
hands of her Union governor, Hicks, a buffer of 
the greatest value to the city of Washington, as 
soon as the North's military arrangements were 
complete and the battle line was fixed on the south 
side of the Potomac River. 

There were many critical times in Washington 
before the war was done, when the capitol, the 



THE BEGINNING OP THE WAR 1<K) 

executive mansion and all the symbols of the gov- 
ernment's authority were in imminent risk of ]>;i ss 
ing into control of the South, the city becoming 
the seat of the Confederate instead of the Federal 
administration. The first of these seasons of anx- 
iety and trial, of which Lincoln was to experience 
very many, confronted him early in his administra- 
tion. Sumter had surrendered. Virginia had se- 
ceded. Maryland was in danger of following her 
out of the Union. Federal property within sight 
of Washington was confiscated. Government offi- 
cials from justices of the Supreme Court and officers 
in the army of the rank of Eobert E. Lee, down to 
clerks in department bureaus, were resigning in 
great numbers. Northern troops hurrying South, 
were unable to get transportation through the state 
of Maryland. General Scott, who was generally 
known as "Old Fuss and Feathers," was openly dis- 
trusted by members of the cabinet, as for example 
by Mr. Blair, and he was so aged and gouty, that if a 
battle were fought he could go to the scene only 
in a light buggy, for he could no longer bestride a 
horse. The telegraph wires were cut, and Wash- 
ington was as effectually isolated as though it were 
an island in an uncharted sea, A committee from 
Baltimore came to ask Lincoln to send no more 
troops through Maryland, and to "recognize the 
independence of the Southern states." His reply 
was characteristic of the man who had already 
made himself the great substantial bulwark of the 
Union. To the suggestion that he should violate 



200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his oath and surrender the government to conspira- 
tors, he answered : 

i i There is no Washington in that ; no Jackson 
in that — there is no manhood or honor in that. I 
have no desire to invade the South ; but I mast 
have troops to defend this capital. Geographically 
it lies surrounded by the soil of Maryland, and 
mathematically the necessity exists that they should 
come over her territory. Our men are not moles 
and can't dig under the earth ; they are not birds 
and can't fly through the air. ... Go home 
and tell your people that if they will not attack us 
we will not attack them ; but if they do attack us, 
we will return it, and that severely." 

Still Washington was helpless ; still no troops 
came with anxiety increasing every hour. Once 
on the afternoon of April 23d, Lincoln, in his execu- 
tive offices, thinking himself alone, after pacing up 
and down the room for a long time in gloomy med- 
itation, was overheard to moan as he looked down 
the Potomac by which route the soldiers were ex- 
pected, " Why don't they come? Why don't 
they come ? " ' Again he complained with the 
irony that often characterized his speech : u I be- 
gin to believe that there is no North." The New 
York regiment, the famous Seventh, in which the 
city felt a pardonable pride, was on its way, and 
finally it came. With its banners flying, its men 
marching in orderly ranks behind its military 
band, one of the best musical organizations in the 
1 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. IV, p. 152. 






THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 201 

country, it paraded through the avenues of the 
Federal capital, the people throwing open their 
windows and nocking out upon the pavements to 
welcome the deliverers, soon with the regiments 
which quickly followed them to be the instruments 
to give the city an aspect of hope and patriotism. 

Meanwhile the Southern leaders were improvis- 
ing a plan of campaign should Lincoln undertake 
an " invasion" of their "sacred soil." They were 
drilling and organizing their volunteers. ' ' What 
are Old Abe and Seward going to do?" was the 
question on many lips when Mr. Russell visited the 
South. No one was destined to wait a very long 
time for the reply to this inquiry. At two o 7 clock 
on the morning of May 24th, lighted on their way 
by a brilliant full moon and preceded by cavalry, 
the Union forces which had flocked to Washington 
from the various Northern states, moved across the 
Potomac and without molestation from the Virginia 
militia, began the construction of that system of 
fortifications and earthworks upon Arlington 
Heights which throughout the war served as an 
important protection for the capital. The out- 
posts were pushed forward several miles into the 
heart of the Old Dominion, and that sacrilegious 
act, the entry of one state's troops upon the soil of 
another state with hostile intent which was de- 
clared to be inimical to the genius of republican 
institutions, was soon successfully performed. The 
Richmond Examiner called the Federals as they ad- 
vanced, " the band of thieves, robbers and assassins 



202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in the pay of Abraham Lincoln commonly known 
as the United States Army." The grand seigneurs 
of the South, although there were but about 400, - 
000 slaveholders in a white Southern population of 
five millions and a half, consistently to the end of 
the war spoke of the " Yankees" as religious 
fanatics and foreign mercenaries, and confidently 
asserted that the North had had its principles so 
corrupted by the rotting virus of commercial 
ambition, that the republic under its direction 
could no longer be a refuge for the down -trodden 
and the oppressed. General Beauregard, in com- 
mand of the Confederate Army in June, 1861, de- 
clared in a pronunciamento which greatly incensed 
the North that, " All rules of civilized warfare are 
abandoned and the United States proclaim by 
their acts if not by their banners that their war-cry 
is ' Beauty and Booty." Such words were used 
before General Butler had yet entered New Orleans, 
or Sherman had devastated his way to the sea. 

Indeed, practically nothing of any kind had yet 
been effected by the Federal army and General 
Scott proposed no action until the next winter 
when he would blockade the ports and seize posts 
on the Mississippi, enveloping the South and 
crushing its breath out by his widely ridiculed 
" Anaconda Scheme." The public mind would 
have none of this. The South must be given its 
lesson at once. The Union must be restored to- 
day, — this week. The three months' men would 
soon be going home and their services must be 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 203 

utilized in a grand attack upon Richmond which 
would end the rebellion. The collection of raw 
recruits which had streamed into Washington was, 
according to the New York newspapers, "the 
greatest army the world ever saw ; perfect in 
officers and discipline ; unsurpassed in devotion 
and courage. 7 ' Even President Lincoln greatly 
deceived himself as to the determined character of 
the resistance which would be encountered in any 
attempt to penetrate Virginia, and was persuaded 
into an advocacy of the attack on the Confederate 
line at Bull Run. 

Probably no proud nation ever went into a battle 
so ill advisedly. McDowell was to command the 
movement, while old General Scott dozed upon his 
couch in Washington, his position when Lincoln 
repaired to his office to learn of the progress of the 
engagement. " If old Scott had legs he'd be good 
for a big thing yet," said one of his visitors. But 
he had no legs nor did McDowell have a map of 
Virginia. It was declared that no military chart 
of that state was in existence. There was no 
knowledge even of the direction of the roads and 
the cry of " On to Richmond," when it first was 
heard in the North was accompanied with as little 
detailed information concerning the methods of 
reaching that city, as can well be presupposed of 
educated men in a country commonly governed for 
seventy -five years. To the Northern soldiers the 
parade into Virginia was like an expedition into 
a foreign land, rather than one of the American 






204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

States, but the movement was undertaken as light- 
heartedly as a picnic or a rabbit hunt. 

Not only did the soldiers go forward in the spirit 
of the holiday, but the entire population of Wash- 
ington was similarly possessed of a desire to 
participate in the merrymaking. Members of 
Congress accompanied by their ladies went out to 
the field with rugs, opera-glasses and telescopes, 
intending to view the battle, as a football game, 
from safe points of vantage. The aristocracy 
mingled with the riffraff of the city, in the train 
of the soldiery. Gigs, hacks and all available 
wheeled vehicles were impressed into the service. 
The correspondent of the London Times, was for 
long unable to secure a mount for use in carrying 
him to the front. The price of hire for a spavined 
horse he was told would be $1,000 which, when he 
objected, drew from the owner, avaricious to profit 
by the rare opportunity, this response: 

"Well, take it or leave it ! If you want to see 
this fight, a thousand dollars is cheap. I guess 
there were chaps paid more than that to see Jenny 
Lind on her first night, and this battle is not going 
to be repeated." 

The collision occurred on Sunday, July 21st. In 
Washington there was absolute confidence in a tri- 
umphant advance. Senator Sumner said that Gen- 
eral Scott told him that the Federals would be in 
Eichmond by Saturday night, but instead the whole 
army almost immediately fell into full retreat. 
Sightseers and troops in a confused mass were pour- 



THE BEGINNING OF THE AVAR 205 

ing into Washington and some of the men, their 
time expiring, did not cease running till they had 
reached their homes, weary of the whole profession 
of soldiering. Although themselves entirely un- 
prepared for battle and ignorant of the advantage 
they might have won had they pressed their pur- 
suit, the Confederates appeared under the leader- 
ship of Thomas Jonathan Jackson who, in this 
engagement, won for himself the lasting sobriquet 
of "Stonewall." A Southern prisoner, asked once 
for his opinion of the relative value of Confederate 
commanders, replied : " Ah ! Colonel Johnsing, we 
guess to be the retreatin'est general we ever had ; 
but the grittiest and the nankin' est was Stonewall 
Jackson." These qualities were displayed by 
Jackson to vast advantage at Bull Bun and the 
panic induced by his operations, although at the 
head of no very formidable force, was equal to that 
in a playhouse at a cry of fire. Guns, ammunition 
carriages, pleasure wagons, provision trains, men 
on horseback, pedestrians and troops, senators, 
congressmen and idlers from Northern cities 
stumbled over each other, throwing their arms, 
coats and canteens by the way, while shouts that the 
rebel cavalry were coming to cut down the strag- 
glers, filled every one with a terror like that in- 
spired on the Turkish frontiers by the Bashi 
Bazouks. A stand was finally effected with a con- 
siderable body of troops short of the streets of 
Washington, and since the Confederates failed to 



206 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pursue the fleeing bluecoats, the city soon regained 
some measure of its composure. 

Bitter disappointment, sleepless nights with a 
cool and inflexible determination to go forward on 
his course characterized the commander-in-chief of 
the armies and navies of the United States in the 
White House. Promiscuous criticism and recrimi- 
nation characterized the Northern newspapers, but 
after the first flush of indignation and surprise the 
people sullenly buckled on their armor for a long- 
war. 

Congress, which had been called to meet in extra 
session on July 4th, had learned from the President 
in his inaugural address before this disastrous 
battle had yet been fought that he would require at 
least 400,000 men and $400,000,000. "That num- 
ber of men," he said, " is about one-tenth of those 
of proper ages within the regions where apparently 
all are willing to engage, and the sum is less than a 
twenty-third part of the money value owned by the 
men who seem ready to devote the whole." He 
added that a right result at this time will be 
"worth more to the world than ten times the 
money." The issue, he said, " embraces more than 
the fate of these United States. It presents to the 
whole family of man the question whether a consti- 
tutional republic or democracy — a government of 
the people by the same people — can or cannot 
maintain its territorial integrity against its own 
domestic foes. . . . Our popular government 
has often been called an experiment. Two points 



THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 207 

in it our own people have already settled — the suc- 
cessful establishing and the successful administering 
of it. One still remains — its successful mainte- 
nance against a formidable attempt to overturn it." 
Congress pledged its support to the president 
with alacrity. It even exceeded his expectation 
and voted him 500,000 volunteers for a service of 
three years besides authorizing an increase of the 
regular army. It now understood something of the 
gravity of the issue. Some of its members had 
witnessed the battle of Bull Run, and one, at least, 
caught within the Confederate lines, was taken 
away to linger for a season in Libby Prison. A 
conviction of the reality of the crisis with which it 
was immediately face to face settled upon the North, 
and it poured forth in loyal devotion its population 
and treasure, although still with but a faint con- 
ception of the severity and the duration of the 
exertions to be demanded of it in the contest to 
maintain the authority of the constitution and the 
laws. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 

It is difficult to know what evil genius, as it 
seems to most Americans and all Englishmen at 
this distance of time, guided public opinion in 
Great Britain in the early years of the Civil War. 
The recent relations of the two governments had 
been quite friendly. Lexington and Bunker Hill 
and the sack of Washington in 1814, with which 
American children have long been ingrained 
through the study of their school-books, were at 
the time rather quiescent issues. The Prince of 
Wales had visited the United States in 1860, and it 
was felt that his tour of the country bringing, as 
he did the messages of good will from the queen 
and her respected prince consort, would serve effec- 
tually to heal any old breaches of misunderstanding 
and difference. The young visitor planted a chest- 
nut in the mould at Mount Vernon when the Lon- 
don Times remarked with some international gusto : 
"It seemed as the royal youth closed the earth 
around the little germ that he was burying the last 
faint trace of discord between us and our great 
brethren in the West." 

England had abolished slavery in the West Indies 
and through the efforts of her philanthropists was 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 209 

proud to say, with some degree of moral superiority, 
that the curse had been permanently banished from 
her dominions. The emissaries from her prominenl 
journals who were here to interpret the situation 
for the most learned and cultivated public opinion 
in the British Islands plainly expressed their loath 
ing of the institution as it was exhibited to them 
upon their arrival in this country. Edward Dicey, 
who came to report the war for the Spectator, was 
told everywhere in the South that the slaves were 
contented and happy, and had no wish to be free, 1 
a statement he could not reconcile with the nauseat- 
ing advertisements which he read in the Baltimore 
newspapers. 

"Twenty-five Dollars Reward. — Ran away 

March 20th from the farm of Mrs. S. B. Mayo in Anne 

Arundel County, negro boy, John Stewart. He is 

nineteen or twenty years of age ; five feet nine or ten 

inches high ; very prominent mouth and large front 

teeth ; light complexion ; has a stupid look when 

spoken to ; his father lives in Annapolis. Any one 

who will arrest and secure him in jail can receive the 

above reward. 

"T. H. Gaithes, Howard County. 

"Ran away from the subscriber 13th March, 
negro woman, Ellen, aged about forty years and her 
boy Joe, aged seven years. They are both yellow 
color. Ellen has a defect in one eye ; Joe is bright 
yellow. I will pay a liberal reward for their arrest. 

li Joseph M. Bosley." 

The laws establishing such penalties for offenses 

1 "Six months in the Federal States," Vol. I, p. 253. 



210 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

by slaves as flogging on the bare back, cropping of 
ears and branding on the cheek, still unrepealed in 
a number of Southern states, filled Mr. Dicey with 
inexpressible disgust. 

William H. Russell who had come out for the 
London Times, found, during his tour of the South, 
to his astonishment, that there were laws forbidding 
the education of slaves. He saw overseers direct- 
ing gangs of negroes, male and female, with heavy 
thonged whips. Among the women there was a 
class known as "suckers," who were permitted to 
go home at certain times during the day to give 
their babes the breast. The negroes were fed in 
barracks upon corn bread, molasses, pork and 
sometimes fish. The owner regarded slavery, said 
Mr. Russell, as a guarantee against the exactions 
of the orgauized trades union, so disturbing to the 
employer under any system of free labor. The 
interest upon $600 or $1,000, the invested value of 
the slave, added to the cost of sustenance, was a very 
low wage, even considering the chance of working 
him out in a few years and the possibility of his 
escape from bondage which was very slight in 
the Gulf states. From the advertisements it was 
plain that slaves were identified by cuts and brands 
left by repeated lashings. In Richmond, Mr. 
Russell was offended by a sign board exhibited 
prominently in the street : 

" Smith and Company advance money on slaves, 
and have constant supplies of Virginia negroes on 
sale or hire." 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 211 

He attended a slave auction where men and even 
women were stripped and fingered by prospective 
buyers, gathered together as at a horse bazaar from 
many different places. Often the negroes were 
manacled. Sometimes they were compelled to 
show whether they were of good parts, by running 
about in front of the auction block. An auctioneer 
in Mr. Bussell's presence cried out: "A prime 
field hand ! Just look at him — good natered, well 
tempered ; no marks, nary sign of bad about him • 
en-i-ne hunthered — only nine hun-ther-ed an 7 fifty 
dol'rs for 'im. Why it's quite radaklous ! Nine 
hundred and fifty dol'rs. I can't raly — that's 
good. Thank you, sir. Twenty -five bid — nine 
huntherd and seventy-five dol'rs for this most use- 
ful hand." 

Thus the negro was knocked down, paid for and 
taken away. " That nigger went cheap," said one 
onlooker to a companion. "Yes, sir," was the 
response. " Niggers is cheap now — that's a fact." 

The slaveholder's philosophy, Mr. Russell said, 
when his observations were done, could be summed 
up in one short sentence : " See how fat my pigs 
are." 

But Englishmen with a few estimable exceptions 
chose not to consider the American war as a con- 
test for the extinction of slavery, a view in which 
they were enforced by President Lincoln's settled 
determination to make it a war for the Union and 
not for the negro, for shrewd reasons of state to be 
described in another place. Jefferson Davis on his 



212 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

side, too, with something of the same tactical skill, 
strove to conceal the issue. The Southern people 
were not fighting for slavery but for independence, 
said he, "and that or extermination they would 
have." 

This view of the case was diligently propagated 
in England by William L. Yancey who, with some 
of the power of Mirabeau, having incited the 
South to a revolution to redress its wrongs, now 
appeared in Europe as a Confederate commissioner. 
He spoke in many places and won a vast amount 
of attention, especially in Lancashire in the spin- 
ning and weaving districts of England long sup- 
plied with cotton from the Southern states. Lord 
John Russell, England's minister of Foreign 
Affairs, spoke of the Union as "a confederation," 
to which the return of the states in secession was 
"a hopeless dream." Lord Palmerston, Glad- 
stone, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Edward A. Free- 
man, and indeed nearly all of Great Britain's 
political and literary men of foremost rank, as well 
as the principal British reviews and newspapers 
declared, and the wish seemed parent to the 
thought, that democracy in America had been 
tried and had sadly failed. Each state was large 
enough, according to the standards of Europe, for 
a separate republic, and no evil would come from 
a division of the Union. Refusing to recognize 
that it was a war for the destruction of slavery, 
Dr. Mack ay, who represented an English journal 
in America, wrote that, u the struggle between the 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 213 

North and the South of which the negro is made 
the pretext is as all the world knows by this time 
a struggle for political power and ascendancy." 
So late as in 1863, William H. Russell was still 
predicting that the Southern states would gain 
their freedom. He recommended the North to 
"set themselves at work to accomplish their 
destiny," losing no time, "in sighing over van- 
ished empire." 

George Augustus Sala, as unfriendly an observer 
as England has ever sent hither to write out his im- 
pressions for the British press, discovered three 
reasons for his countrymen's sympathies for the 
Confederacy. 1 These were (1) Because if the South 
wished to secede they conceived that it had the 
same right to do so as any or all the states had to 
secede from England in 1776. The issue then was 
the payment of taxes, not a greater matter than that 
for which the South contended in 1861. 

(2) Because England was convinced upon Mr. 
Lincoln's own testimony that the war had not been 
undertaken to free the negro. The slave would 
have been abandoned to his fate any day if by that 
act the Union could have been restored. 

(3) Because, to quote Mr. Sala's picturesque 
language, the war was conducted with rapine and 
atrocity, "than which the wars of Attila and 
Genseric can show nothing more flagitious and in a 
spirit worthier of pagans and cannibals than of 
Christian gentlemen." 

1 "My Diary in America in the Time of War," Vol. I, p. 50. 



214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

That the struggle was not a gentleman-like con- 
test caused more than a few excellent Englishmen 
many conscientious qualms, when they sought a 
logical cause for their sympathy with a govern- 
ment whose success meant the perpetuation of hu- 
man slavery. The most usual episodes in war 
gained an exaggerated cruelty by passage over sea. 
The learned Marquess of Lothian, in a book writ- 
ten to express his revulsion at the methods pursued 
by the Northern generals likened one of these, on 
the strength of a barbarity which had come to his 
knowledge, to a famous commander of the seven- 
teenth century, who used to relate as a very good 
joke how his soldiers had sacked a town, finding 
only a couple of old women there, who being fit for 
no other purpose, were promptly made into soup. 

Yet there were here and there distinguished ex- 
amples of Englishmen, who perceived the true pur- 
poses of the war and correctly guaged its beneficent 
results were the North to gain the victory. Chief 
among these were John Stuart Mill and John 
Bright. "War is an ugly thing," said Mr. Mill 
in an article in a leading British review, "but not 
the ugliest of things ; the decayed and degraded 
state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks 
nothing worth a war is worse. 7 ' He had no doubt 
of the North's final triumph, if it should not de- 
spair, for "they are twice as numerous and ten or 
twelve times as rich." He deplored the attitude of 
his government, exaggerating the importance of its 
action in recognizing the Confederates as belliger- 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 215 

exits. k 'At the dawn of a hope that the demon 
might now at last be chained and flung into the 
pit," said he, ''England stepped in and for the 
sake of cotton made Satan victorious." 

John Bright' s ringing appeals for sympathy for 
the North were heard across the sea, and everj 
loyal Unionist came to regard him as in some 
sense a personal friend. In a speech in Lancashire 
in 1861, he said : " The war, be it successful or not, 
be it wise or not, is a war to sustain the govern- 
ment and to sustain the authority of a great na- 
tion." The people of England, if they were true 
to themselves, could feel no sympathy for 1 1 those 
who wish to build up a great empire on the per- 
petual bondage of millions of their fellow men." 

Again at Birmingham he said with stirring elo- 
quence : "I cannot believe that civilization in its 
journey with the sun will sink into endless night 
to gratify the ambition of the leaders of this revolt 
who seek to 

1 ' Wade through slaughter to a throne 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind. 

I have a far other and far brighter vision before 
my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish 
it. I see one vast confederation stretching from 
the frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing 
South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic 
westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main 
— and I see one people, and one law, and one lan- 
guage, and one faith, and over all that wide conti- 



216 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

nent the home of freedom, and a refuge for the op- 
pressed of every race and of every clime." 

Many in England lived for the recantation, — Mr. 
Sala to write 1 that in choosing his side, he had 
been " neither logical nor worldly wise. In short," 
he added, ' 1 1 approved myself to be what is com- 
monly called a fool, but my partiality for Dixie- 
land was simply and solely due to a sentimental 
feeling, and at thirty-four years of age it is per- 
missible to possess some slight modicum of senti- 
mentality." 

Mr. Gladstone, alluding in 1896 to his Newcastle 
speech, in which he declared that Jefferson Davis 
had made a nation, confessed to his mistake which 
he said was one of " incredible grossness." He 
was the more pained and grieved whenever he re- 
flected upon his action because, said he, " I have 
for the last five and twenty years received from the 
government and people of America, tokens of good 
will which could not fail to arouse my undying 
gratitude." ] 

In the meantime the Southern leaders well knew 
the solicitude of English opinion in their behalf, 
and exploited it very skilfully. Following the ex- 
ample of the colonies during the Revolutionary 
war, they diligently sought foreign alliances. 
They found some favor in the eyes of Napoleon III, 
who was at this time the government of France, 
and promptly secured recognition as belligerents 

1 " America Revisited, " Vol. I, p. 111. 

2 Morley, " Life of Gladstone," Vol. II, p. 82. 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 217 

upon both sides of the channel. President Lincoln 
and his Secretary of State were not unmindful of 
the dangers which confronted them abroad. 
Charles Francis Adams had been selected as Un- 
American minister to England, with prophetic 
knowledge of the need of his learning and skill in 
diplomacy, were the North to be saved from for- 
eign entanglements. When he left these shores to 
undertake his mission, it was not without definite 
instructions covering his action in a conceivable 
case. "You alone will represent your country, 
and you will represent the whole of it there," were 
the words with which he was sent forward by the 
American Department of State. l i When you are 
asked to divide that duty with others, diplomatic 
relations between the government of Great Britain 
and this government will be suspended, and will re- 
main so until it shall be seen which of the two is 
most strongly intrenched in the confidence of their 
respective nations and of mankind. ■ 7 

The president and Mr. Seward had agreed upon 
the point that there should be no intercourse be- 
tween the British Foreign Office and the Confeder- 
ate commissioners in London. England and France, 
acting harmoniously before Mr. Adams had yet 
reached his post, had issued proclamations of neu- 
trality, thus raising the Southern states to the 
position of belligerents with the right in the sight 
of other nations to establish their separate sov- 
ereignty, if they were able to do so. The manner 
in which this act had been executed, and the 



218 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

anxiety hourly felt lest the next step should be 
taken, the full recognition of the Confederate govern- 
ment, with its own regularly accredited diplomatic 
and consular agents, roused Mr. Seward to a sense 
of the need of some understanding with England 
concerning the present and future relations of Lon- 
don and Washington. In some ire he sat down to 
write a dispatch, the contents of which Mr. Adams 
was desired to lay before Lord Russell. It is com- 
monly stated that had the letter been forwarded as 
it was first written, grave international difficulties 
would have certainly ensued, although this point 
in the nature of the case must remain a matter for 
speculation. Passing under Lincoln's scrutiny, it 
was so materially modified in the interest of peace- 
ful diplomacy that its purpose in convincing Eng- 
land of the existence of a firm determination at 
Washington to require a careful observance of every 
provision of the law of nations, while at the same 
time offering no threat or offense of any kind need- 
lessly was very skilfully accomplished. 

The president's most important amendment was 
that the paper should be for Minister Adams' pri- 
vate guidance rather than for transmission to the 
British government. He substituted the word 
" hurtful " for " wrongful." For " no one of these 
proceedings will be borne by the United States," 
the president wrote, "no one of these proceedings 
will pass unquestioned." The sentence, "when 
this act of intervention is distinctly performed we 
from that hour shall cease to be friends and become 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 219 

once more, as we have twice before been forced to 
be, enemies of Great Britain," was entirely elim- 
inated. For "crime" he wrote "error," and the 
changes were so important in determining the tone 
of the document, ' and through that quality the at- 
titude of the two governments in the immediate 
future that it at once raises Lincoln's service to the 
country to that rank which President Washing- 
ton's assumed when, with fixed will during his ad- 
ministration he refused to yield to the foolish 
clamor for an armed alliance in the name of liberty 
and equality with the revolutionists in Prance. In 
this instance, however, the service could be per- 
formed in secrecy, and without awakening the pas- 
sions of the people, who so often complicate the 
tasks of the diplomatist, a circumstance which un- 
fortunately did not favor the negotiations at the 
next critical point in the relations between the two 
governments. 

The commissioners first sent out by the Southern 
states, having achieved few practical results in 
Great Britain, the government at Richmond re- 
solved to send abroad James Murray Mason of 
Virginia, and John Slidell of Louisiana. Both 
were men of parts, United States senators from their 
respective states before secession, distinguished by 
their social and political connections in the South, 
perhaps as well suited favorably to influence the 

1 For Lincoln's corrections of Seward's draft see "Reminis- 
cences of Abraham Lincoln," collected by Allen Thorndyke 
Hice. 



220 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

foreign mind as any men who could have been 
chosen for this important mission. Accompanied 
by members of their families and their secretaries, 
they boarded the Theodora, a blockade-runner, at 
Charleston in October, 1861, and were landed safely 
in Cardenas, Cuba, whence they proceeded overland 
to Havana. There they were favored with some 
ostentatious attentions at the hands of the British 
consul, and in the course of two or three weeks 
were taken awaj' on a British packet, the Trent, 
which was bound for St. Thomas, whence they 
would find conveyance to Europe. This steam- 
ship had not proceeded far from the Cuban coast 
when she was hove to by the San Jacinto, a United 
States war sloop commanded by Captain Charles 
Wilkes, of repute and experience in South Polar 
exploration. The Trent was searched, Mason and 
Slidell were seized and made prisoners, though not 
without sufficient appearance of resistance to give 
color to the case, when it should reach the stages of 
public adjustment. 

After detaining the ship for about two hours, 
Wilkes headed for Fortress Monroe, where he 
proudly reported his act. The news was received 
with vociferous delight in Washington, and in truth 
in all the Northern states. Proceeding under orders 
to place his prisoners in a fort in Boston, in the 
heart of the Abolition country, Wilkes at once be- 
came a great popular idol. He was banquetted in 
Boston, New York and other Northern cities. 
Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, the Chief Jus- 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 221 

tice of that state, and other New Englanders of 
light and leading, participated publicly in the 
rejoicings. Secretary of the Navy Welles, who 
wore "a long white beard and a stupendous white 
wig which caused him to look like the heavy grand 
father in a genteel comedy," the New York Herald's 
"modern Kip Van Winkle" of the Lincoln Cabi- 
net, officially approved of Captain Wilkes' action. 
His conduct, said the secretary, "in seizing these 
public enemies was marked by intelligent ability, 
decision and firmness, and has the emphatic ap- 
proval of this Department." Even Secretary Sew- 
ard, Mr. Welles has said, whether or not to draw 
away the fire of later criticism from his own person, 
was at first jubilant at the capture. 1 The House of 
Eepresentatives impulsively passed a resolution 
tendering its thanks to the commander of the Ban 
Jacinto, and one member proposed that he should 
be presented with a gold medal. The newspapers 
of the North were at no pains to conceal their pleas- 
ure in the accomplishment of the deed. There were 
altered versions of " God Save the Queen " : 

" God save me, great John Bull, 
Long keep my pocket full, 

God save John Bull. 
Ever victorious, 
Haughty, vainglorious, 
Snobbish, censorious, 

God save John Bull." 

An awakening as to the danger of the act came 
1 Welles, " Lincoln and Seward," p. 187. 



222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

very promptly. The London Chronicle declared 
that Congress ' ' ninst sit down like ancient Pistol to 
eat the leek it had insultingly brandished in British 
faces. " The search of the Trent was regarded as 
"an act of wanton violence and outrage." Great 
Britain immediately began active preparations for 
defense, crediting Mr. Seward with designs upon 
Canada ; a panic seized the stock markets, and the 
United States was face to face with a war with 
England as well as with her internal foes. 

Lord Palmerston's first demand was for a com- 
plete disavowal of the act, the release of the 
prisoners and their return to Great Britain's pro- 
tection, under which they stood at the time of their 
capture, else his government's American minister, 
Lord Lyons, would be withdrawn. Almost the last 
official act of the prince consort's life, then nearly 
run its course, was to modify the asperities of this 
note, thus playing an important part in the peaceful 
adjustment of the difficulty. The demand finally 
took the form of a request for an apology, with the 
liberation of Mason and Slidell, seven days being 
allowed the United States for her reply, when, if 
satisfaction were not given, diplomatic relations 
would be broken off. 

From the first, Mr. Lincoln's characteristic caution 
and common sense led him to look askance at Cap- 
tain Wilkes' achievement. His disapprobation 
grew upon consultation with Charles Sumner, who 
early became the president's trusted companion and 
friend, though no two men could well have been 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 223 

more different. "Sumner," said Lincoln, "is my 
idea of a bishop." The Massachusetts senator was 
disposed to regard the capture of Mason and Slidell 
with much misgiving. The president , w hen visitors 
hurried to him for an opinion, contented himself by 
relating equivocal anecdotes, and to one he plainly 
declared that he feared the prisoners would prove 
to be "white elephants." There were prolonged 
conferences between Lord Lyons and Mr. Seward, 
and Seward and the president, the Secretary of 
State at length writing his famous reply to the 
English note, a masterly document, one of the most 
remarkable, perhaps, for its scholarliness and 
understanding of statecraft which has ever issued 
from the United States Foreign Office. 

Very early the president, through Mr. Seward, 
had declared that the capture was effected upon 
Captain Wilkes' own initiation, and without au- 
thorization from Washington. He was, therefore, 
in a position to make further disavowals if that 
course were necessary to mollify English opinion. 
Mr. Seward had vast opportunities here for a dis- 
play of his skill as a constitutional lawyer and his 
cleverness in dialectics. It was his task to show 
that what Great Britain now contended for con- 
cerning the right of search was precisely what the 
United States had contended for against her during 
the War of 1812. He believed that Captain Wilkes 
had kept within the terms of the law of nations, 
except in failing to take the vessel into custody for 
an orderly judicial determination of the question of 



224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

contraband before a prize court. The regularity of 
the proceeding had been departed from at this 
point. Under all the circumstances, the seizure 
having been made without authority, Mr. Seward 
found it not difficult to disavow the act and liberate 
the prisoners "cheerfully." They were delivered 
at Provincetown, Mass., to a British sloop-of-war, 
to be taken to St. Thomas to continue their journey, 
which had been interrupted while bound to that 
point seventy days before. x Their adventure 
profited them little enough in Europe, where they 
could not be received as commissioners, since Lord 
Russell had officially declared they were not contra- 
band. They were everywhere branded with sus- 
picion, and commerce with them at once indicated 
open secessionist sympathies. The incident also 
brought home to England a fuller sense of the re- 
sponsibilities of her position as a neutral in the 
war. 

As for opinion in the North, it quite generally 
regarded the surrender of Mason and Slidell as iu 
some sense a national humiliation, to be avenged in 
a more fortunate season when the nation was not 
occupied with foes in its own midst, passing on a 
grudge that contributed more than any other thing 
to render unhappy for more than thirty years the state 
of the American mind toward Great Britain. The 
presence of Russian fleets in Federal waters, both 
on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, by many 
taken to be an echo of the Crimea, was a fortunate 
1 Thomas L. Harris, "The Trent Affair," p. 226. 



ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 226 

incident silently working, it was freely asserted, to 
make England abate something of her bellicose 
attitude. This fact at any rate was of some value 
in consoling the people with the issue, eager as they 
always are to iind a leek for the other man, while 
engaged in the unhappy occupation of eating their 
own. A Richmond newspaper remarked that the 
American eagle had " screeched his loudest screech 
of defiance then — 

" ' Dropt like a craven cock his conquered wing.' " 

Vallandigham and the Copperheads of the North 
sought to have it appear that the United States had 
sacrificed all character for dignity as a member of 
the family of nations. To President Lincoln, and 
men who thought as he, it was enough at the 
moment to know that the government had escaped 
a great foreign war, and could continue to give its 
undivided attention to the recovery of the Southern 
states. 



CHAPTER IX 

ANXIOUS YEARS 

The Federal recruits were not yet in composure 
after their precipitate flight into Washington from 
Bull Run, before President Lincoln had convinced 
himself that the army must be subjected to a pro- 
longed season of discipline, if it were to be made fit 
for effective military operations. Scott, too aged 
for active service, and in partial public disgrace 
with McDowell for the results at Bull Run, must 
make way for a younger man. Captain Mont- 
gomery C. Meigs told the president that the army 
needed a commander, who in case of battle could 
mount a horse, and Mr. Lincoln and his advisers 
pitched upon a young man thirty -five years of age, 
George B. McClellau, the son of a distinguished phy- 
sician in Philadelphia, whose rapid transformation 
from the administrative offices of a Western railway 
to Napoleonic heights of repute as a warrior, has 
not been surpassed by anything in the line of hero- 
making in the long record of impulsive popular 
movements which are attributed to the climate in 
the belt of soil occupied by the American nation. 
Tt is true he had enjoyed the training at West 
Point, and had won the brevet of captain when just 
out of his teens in an engineer corps in the Mexican 



ANXIOUS YEARS 227 

War. Subsequently he had made some surveys for 
the government, written manuals on military 
tactics, and went to Europe as a member of an 
official commission, where he viewed the operations 
in the Crimea. At the outbreak of the contesl he 
was the president of the Ohio and Mississippi Kail 
road. The governor of Ohio promoted him at one 
leap from a captaincy to the rank of major-general 
in command of all the troops sent into the field from 
that state, and he promptly received confirmation in 
his title by a similar appointment at the hands of the 
authorities in Washington. He was now no longer 
a major-general of militia, but a major-general in 
the United States Army, and was given command 
of the so-called Department of the Ohio, consisting 
of the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, which 
was soon enlarged to include Missouri and parts of 
Western Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

While the battle of Bull Run was being fought 
he was operating in the loyal counties of western 
Virginia and along the Ohio line, whence with a 
few skirmishes to his credit, he was called to 
Washington to a still higher place. A magic 
wand could not have wrought wonders more 
swiftly. McClellan's promotion to Scott's place 
was not immediate. His duties for the time being 
would be as commander of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, the United States forces assembled upon both 
sides of that river, when he came to Washington, a 
body of few more than 50,000 men. He was for 
the moment to divide his functions with old Gen- 



228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

eral Scott and perform that part of the work which 
involved activity in the field, to be confined more 
particularly at present to the organization of the 
regiments which in almost endless numbers poured 
into the capital from all the free states to be drilled 
and vitalized into a useful army. He was called 
to Washington the day after Bull Run, and in 
three months, or by the time he succeeded General 
Scott in full command of the military forces of the 
United States, on November 1, 1861, the Army of 
the Potomac had been raised to a strength of about 
200,000 men. 

Instead of taking his place with the army in Vir- 
ginia, he resided in Washington. Erect on a finely 
caparisoned steed, he rode from post to post, and 
was promptly denominated a "Young Napoleon" 
by the press which fawned upon him and saw in 
him the embodiment of national courage and 
might. He told his troops that hereafter they 
could ask 1 1 no higher honor than the proud con- 
sciousness that they belonged to the Army of the 
Potomac." His affability and culture brought 
him great social popularity. He was a lion in 
Washington drawing-rooms, and in banquetting 
and conversation shone brilliantly. He was given 
to the writing of letters upon subjects in no manner 
connected with his line of duty, especially on polit- 
ical matters, and criticised when he did not pity 
the " incapables" who were at the head of the gov- 
ernment departments. His portraits were exhib- 
ited everywhere in the shop windows, the presi- 



ANXIOUS YEARS 229 

dont called him George, and came frequently to 
visit him, until rebuked by the young commander, 
alter waiting an hour or more for an audience, 
through an orderly who was commissioned to say 
that General McClellan had gone to bed. The general 
conferred often with Vallandigham and the Northern 
Copperheads in and out of Congress, who made his 
headquarters their rendezvous and once, says W. 
D. Kelley, the president was compelled to wait at 
the door for a long time for an interview, while a 
coterie of these gentlemen planned his own undoing. 
In spite of what would seem to be an intolerable 
relationship — in any case wholly unmilitary and 
ill-adapted to serve the end in view, the suppres- 
sion of the rebellion, the general was trusted by 
Lincoln, whose devotion was long in being shat- 
tered, beloved by the group of officers whom he 
gathered into his staff, as well as by the rank and 
file of his troops, and the idol of vast bodies of the 
people whose love and confidence he did not forfeit 
even after his departure from places of power. 

To the president's suggestion that he should 
"feel the enemy," his response was that it was too 
strong for him. He was not yet ready. He must 
have more officers, more troops, more artillery. 
These were all dealt out to him unstintedly, month 
after month. General Scott stepped aside, and he 
was brought into that direct contact with the de- 
partments which he desired, but McClellan could 
not be induced to advance with an army which, by 
1 " Lincoln and Stanton," p. 7. 



230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

this time, the country implicitly believed to be in- 
vincible. When in December there was sign of 
his moving forward, he fell sick, and for weeks to- 
gether, awaiting his recovery, the troops rested in 
idleness, the president with increasing difficulty 
standing between him in his inexplicable inaction 
and a public clamorous for battles and victories. 

Meanwhile, Lincoln was constantly gaining a 
fuller mastery of the military problem, and with 
maps before him at his desk, in the executive 
mansion, he kept himself informed of the position 
of all divisions of the army, calculating with a nice 
precision the probable situation of the enemy fac- 
ing each body of Union troops. He conferred at 
length and frequently with generals, admirals, 
senators, congressmen, civilians of all ranks from 
whom he might glean anything of value concern- 
ing the management of the war. "All quiet on 
the Potomac," was the word sent home by the 
newspaper correspondents nightly, and the phrase 
soon found its way into a popular song. "Mac, 
the Unready," the "Little Corporal of Unfought 
Fields," became the object of much ridicule where 
before there had been only praise. His, said the 
New York Herald, was a "masterly inactivity." 
While the army rested, the flower of the young 
manhood of the North was rotting in the Virginia 
swamps, thousands upon thousands dying of fevers 
or being invalided home. 

The first change in the Lincoln cabinet was sig- 
nalized in the decision of the president to relieve 



ANXIOUS YEARS 231 

Mr. Cameron of the war portfolio. The Pennsj I 
vania leader was taken into the cabinet only alter 
he had gained much disagreeable notoriety in the 
national eye for his political methods. Already 
there were some unpleasant incidents in his admin 
istration of the office, although he had occupied it 
less than a year, as in his order in reference to the 
arming of slaves. There were complaints in plei 1 1 \ , 
too, of dishonest contracts with charges that the 
department was supplying the soldiers with spav- 
ined mounts, leaky tents, shoddy uniforms and 
blankets, and stale biscuit and meat. The brunt 
of these scandals fell upon Mr. Cameron, and very 
quietly and politely it was suggested that he should 
take the Russian mission and make way for Edwin 
M. Stanton. The latter, most curiously heady and 
impetuous, until lately had been a Democrat in 
full standing. He was an Ohio lawyer, and had 
come into Buchanan's cabinet as Secretary of War 
at the last moment as a necessary man. He at 
once distinguished himself in his opposition to the 
secessionists in Buchanan's group of counselors. 
He had spoken not six months since of ' ' the pain- 
ful imbecility of Lincoln," and the "venality and 
corruption" of the administration, but of such stuff 
are great war ministers sometimes made. He was 
the man for the place, and Lincoln satisfying him- 
self on this point, gave him the post. 

Stanton was no sooner in his chair than he turned 
his attention to the dilatory, obstreperous and dis- 
obedient general -in -chief. Urged forward through 



232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

all the old and new agencies, though not without 
many unhappy personal passages, McClellan took 
up his march to Richmond by way of the lower 
Chesapeake, thus beginning his famous Peninsular 
campaign. This movement was entirely against 
the advice of the president and such counsel as he 
was able to get from leaders whose judgment he 
highly valued. McClellan would give his endorse- 
ment to no other line of campaign, the president 
yet knew of no general to whom he was ready to 
transfer the command, and leaving a force adjudged 
to be large enough for the protection of the capital, 
the Army of the Potomac moved down the Chesa- 
peake for its invasion of the Peninsula, that tongue 
of land lying southeast of Richmond between the 
York and James rivers. The president had defi- 
nitely ordered an advance February 22, 1862, but 
McClellan must first parade his army up and down 
the deep roads of Virginia to experience them, as 
he explained, in the art of marching, and it was the 
5th of April before the 136,000 men of which the 
force was composed, including their batteries and 
ammunition and baggage trains, were landed from 
their transports at Fort Monroe. The President 
had waived all objections as to routes and plans of 
campaign. All else would be made subordinate, if 
standing no longer on the order of his going, Mc- 
Clellan would but go — and fight. 

By his famous War Order Number 3 of March 
11, 1862, Lincoln relieved McClellan of further per- 
formance of his duties as general-in-chief that he 



ANXIOUS YEARS 233 

might devote his undistracted attention to the cam 
paigu against Richmond, thus opening the way for 
a salutary change of leadership in the West where 
Halleck was raised to an important command. 
The only aspect of hope and good cheer yet given 
to Federal affairs, arose from a few brilliant naval 
successes, represented by the sinking of the Merri- 
mac, the capture of New Orleans, and some advan- 
tageous land movements on the shores of the Mis- 
sissippi. 

In the Peninsula, McClellan's hallucinations as 
to the overwhelming strength of the enemy in front 
of him continued. He drilled and reviewed and 
dug entrenchments, like the practiced engineer that 
he was, and imperiously demanded more men, 
more guns and more support from Washington, 
where cabals in his imagination were always at 
work to hinder the fruition of his simplest plans. 
Stanton once declared that if McClellan " had a 
million men he would swear the enemy had two 
millions, and then he would sit down in the mud 
and yell for three." In his private letters at this 
time he writes of Washington as that "sink of 
iniquity," and of Lincoln, Stanton and their asso- 
ciates as " those treacherous hounds," but in May, 
detachments of his army met bodies of Confederates, 
and some expensive fighting was indulged in in an 
effort to open the way to Richmond. In June the 
Union advance guard had reached a point within 
four miles of the secession capital. Because of the 
extreme deliberation of his movements the Confed- 



234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

erates were enabled to mass a large army in front 
of him, and after a nnmber of sanguinary engage- 
ments in which the victory seemed to rest with the 
Union army, its commander withdrew to Harrison's 
Landing, and thus disappointingly ended the cam- 
paign, ill-starred from the moment it was under- 
taken. The army had come nearer to Richmond 
than it was destined to do again for three years. It 
had fought bravely in a number of engagements 
and displayed at many points personal courage and 
collective morale superior to that of the force ar- 
rayed against it, but the movement had failed, — Mc- 
Clellan declared, because of the omission of Wash- 
ington to sustain him with the necessary numbers 
of troops, Washington because of what General 
Sherman afterward very temperately described as 
"a spirit not consistent with the duty of a com- 
manding general of a great army." 

Lincoln's personal disappointment at the result 
reached the stage of the severest distress, but he did 
not give way to discouragement. To Secretary 
Seward he wrote : "I expect to maintain this con- 
test until -successful, or till I die, or am conquered, 
or my term expires, or Congress or the country 
forsake me." On July 1st he called for 300,000 
new troops who came into the camps to the re- 
frain 

"We are coming, Father Abra'am. three hundred thousand 
more. 
From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New England's 
shore." 



ANXIOUS YEAES 235 

His communications to McOlellan were indulgenl 

and fatherly, while the general busily employe* I 
himself in a work for which he thought himself en- 
titled to a great deal of credit, that of "saving" 
his army. Mr. Lincoln, unable to gain an intelligi- 
ble opinion of the situation from conflicting reports, 
determined to visit the camp in person, and upon 
the 8th of July arrived at Harrison's Landing. He 
came back little cheered by what he had seen. 
The public patience was becoming well exhausted, 
as was also the president's. JSo favorably impressed 
was he by this time with Halleek's military 
abilities, that on July 11, 1862, that general 
was brought to Washington to take the post of 
general -in- chief, an office while he held it, as Mc- 
olay and Hay observe, never more than chief-of- 
staff to the president. Mr. Lincoln had now be- 
come his own general-in-chief, and held that post 
masterfully until Grant came forward to lend his 
comprehending genius to the work of solving the 
problems of the war. 

As a further step preliminary to a complete 
change in command General Pope, another success- 
ful Western man was brought East, and for him was 
created the new Army of Virginia, rightfully re- 
garded as in some respects a rival of the Army of 
the Potomac. Pope was unfortunate in some 
criticisms publicly offered, concerning the conduct 
of the war, in the East and thus forfeited the right 
to the cordial support of McOlellan and McOlellan' s 
friends which might have been denied him in any 



236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

case. Because of the apparently studied effort to 
accomplish his undoing, the second battle of Bull 
Run, fought in the last days of August, 1862, ended 
most disastrously. Although McClellan and his 
troops were ordered back from the Peninsula to 
give Pope support, the movement was delayed and 
cooperation was reluctantly accorded him, the mis- 
fortunes of this much- vaunted general out of the 
West seeming to answer their dearest desires. 
The Union army in somewhat the same way as in 
1861, retreated in disorder, stragglers and broken 
battalions again appearing in the streets of Wash- 
ington. If the "Young Napoleon" had failed, so 
had Pope. As faithful as the old one-legged 
French veteran of many battles, Chauvin, who on 
every occasion for fifty years after Napoleon's 
death chanted the praises of his chief, McClellan' s 
friends were now glad to see the way open for their 
idol' s rehabilitation. ' ' He had so skilfully handled 
his troops in not getting them to Richmond as to 
retain their confidence," said Mr. Welles, 1 and 
Lincoln, with the politician's eye, studied and 
mastered the situation. Against the most em- 
phatic protests of the leading members of his 
Cabinet, against what was very clearly the senti- 
ment of the country at large, barring groups of 
McClellan' s own partisans, the president suggested 
his reinstatement. McClellan' s course at Bull Run, 
out of which rose the Fitz-John Porter court- 
martial and the cashiering of that officer, was to 
1 " Lincoln and Seward," p. 194. 



ANXIOUS YEAES 237 

most men an unpardonable offense. "As an ex- 
hibition of military insubordination and persistant 
disobedience within the sound ol* an enemy's guns," 
one critic has said, " it is unparalleled in modern 
history." 1 McClellan' s treatment of Pope was 
"atrocious," Lincoln himself averred. "It is 
shocking to see and know this but," he added, 
"there is no remedy at present." Convincing 
himself that the situation was critical, and that no 
other policy was at the moment more feasible, he 
turned again to McClellan, seeking to take advan- 
tage of his popularity with the soldiers, and his un- 
questioned talent as an organizer to protect the 
capital and restore discipline among the troops. 

Even Mr. Lincoln's friends have never found it 
easy to defend this act. The rare forgiveness of 
his character ; the state of the country politically, 
McClellan having made himself the Democratic 
leader, and a desire not to exhibit personal or 
partisan pique ; the love borne their commander 
by the soldiers and the gravity of the hour are all 
urged as reasons for the president's headstrong, 
unnatural and, as it seemed, wholly unwise course. 
The most rational explanation of the act is the one 
having to do with political sentiment in the army 
and in the country at large. The autumn elections 
were drawing nigh and they promised not to be 
favorable to the administration. Men openly 
boasted in Pennsylvania and other states, so con- 
gressmen said when they came to Washington after 
1 W. D. Kelley, " Lincoln and Stanton," p. 56. 



238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the campaign had ended, that they would like to 
see Lincoln hanged to a Washington lamp -post, and 
not a few of them upon getting up of mornings to 
read their newspapers, expected to learn that he 
had met this fate. 

The kindliest interpretation of the act makes 
Mr. Lincoln the guardian of the morale of the 
Army of the Potomac. He wished to show the 
troops that when he erred he was manly enough to 
confess his mistakes and correct them, thus popu- 
larizing himself with the men and in the end 
coming to occupy a place in their esteem higher 
than any McClellan had ever held. That the 
situation had in it a critical element was made very 
clear, when General Lee in a few days crossed the 
Potomac with his entire army in the hope of firing 
the heart of Maryland, and visiting fresh humilia- 
tions upon the Northern states. McClellan' s con- 
duct of the battle of Antietam, although severely 
criticised, went a little way to reinstate him in 
the good opinion of the country, and with more 
promptitude and intelligent activity on his part, 
he might have converted it into a sweeping victory. 
With a large corps of fresh troops in reserve he 
failed to press General Lee whose rear guard was 
disappearing across the river, unmolested by a 
superior force that had just gained undoubted ad- 
vantages and could have been used to inflict 
further punishment upon the ragged Southern 
soldiery. Instead McClellan rested, telegraphing 
to Washington in some glee: "The enemy is 



ANXIOUS YEARS 239 

driven back into Virginia. Maryland and lVnn 
sylvania are now safe." 

For weeks the president waited for the general 
to follow Lee, who had not moved very far south 
of the river, and give him battle in Virginia. The 
Confederate cavalrymen swept around the entire 
Union army, and came out on the other side in 
safety, as they had treated it once before on the 
Peninsula. Stuart and his men this time raided 
into Pennsylvania and returned to Southern soil 
with the loss of only one trooper who was captured 
by a few farmers. Lincoln again visited the Army 
of the Potomac, and held long conferences with its 
commanding officer. There was more kindly and 
paternal advice, more recommendation and urgent 
command, all of which was replied to by the usual 
requests for reinforcements, horses and supplies 
denied him, as McClellan continued to allege, 
through mismanagement and the enmity to his per- 
son displayed in high political positions at Wash- 
ington. At his headquarters the staff officers still 
employed themselves with political discussions and 
partisan plots, and one of the offenders, being 
brought before the president, was summarily dis- 
missed from the service. 

The elections over, the president at last decided 
to rid the country of the dilatory commander, whose 
army could never move so long as a horse had a sore 
tongue or a soldier lacked a perfect shoe-lace, the 
order to turn it over to General Burnside and 
report for further instructions at Trenton, X. J., 



240 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

having reached McClellan on November 7th. 
"Alas for my poor country," the deposed com- 
mander remarked as he looked up from a letter he 
was writing when the message came, 1 and in subse- 
quent years he thought the nation fortunate that he 
had not taken the advice of many of his admirers 
who would have had him refuse to obey the order 
and march upon Washington "to take possession 
of the government." 2 Thus ended the military 
career of a man whom his friends defended unto 
the end with a singular loyalty ; whom others were 
willing to dismiss from their attention as "a pam- 
pered and petulant egotist." 3 It is demonstrable 
that he was honestly desirous of saving the Union, 
but of the qualifications of the general he had nooe, 
except those that are possessed by the engineer and 
the drillmaster, and his political interests and am- 
bitions, coupled with his peculiar vanity, wholly 
interfered with a proper performance of the duties 
of the commander of a great army. 

There was as yet a notable lack of men whose 
achievements inevitably marked them out for im- 
portant commands. In McClellan' s place it was 
suggested that "Fighting Joe" Hooker might be 
installed, but Lincoln in consultation with his 
friends inclined to Burnside, whom he regarded as 
1 ' the better housekeeper. ' ' A housekeeper was not 
the need of the time, some one urged ; the demand 

1 " McClellan's Own Story," p. 660. 

2 Ibid., p. 652. 

3 Kelley, " Lincoln and Stanton," p. 51. 



ANXIOUS YEARS 241 

was for a man who would fight. Lincoln replied 
that more fighting could be got out of soldiers and 
animals when they were well cared for, and In- 
wished to bring to an end a regime which was re- 
markable for the frightful disparity between the 
amount of troops and materiel furnished to the 
army and the amount which in time of need proved 
to be effective in a movement against the enemy. 
Thus General Burnside, a devoted friend of Mc- 
Clellan, who thought himself unsuited for so 
important a post, an opinion in which he was not 
mistaken, and who was disinclined to assist in the 
humiliation of his chief, was proffered the command 
of the Army of the Potomac. Next in rank to 
McClellan it was a natural promotion. He had 
enjoyed some independent successes in North Caro- 
lina, and the appointment was for the most part 
very favorably received by those who had long 
recommended a policy of greater military activity. 
Burnside had a plan for the advance upon Rich- 
mond by way of Fredericksburg, and held to it 
obstinately in spite of an effort to persuade him to 
conduct his campaign along a different line. There 
was misunderstanding between him and Halleck. 
Late in November the president again visited the 
army which its commander, in pleasing contrast 
with his famous predecessor, declared to be large 
enough for all present uses, and the time soon came 
for Burnside to cross the Rappahannock and march 
upon the Confederates, commanded by three of the 
best Southern generals who had entrenched them- 



242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

selves formidably upon a range of hills. It was a 
movement to certain death for multitudes of Union 
soldiers who, to their credit, be it said, followed 
their commanders' orders so long as it was within 
human power to do so. It was taken on the 13th 
of December, and thousands of men were put out of 
action in a few minutes in senseless assaults upon a 
natural fortress, bristling with batteries that no 
troops in any uniform could have hoped to capture. 
Burnside doggedly sought to continue the attack, 
but with all his officers urging retirement and pro- 
testing against the useless slaughter of their favorite 
battalions, he gave it up and recrossed the river. 

The year went out in a blaze of Confederate vic- 
tories. General Halleck had taken offense at a 
letter from the president who needed to withdraw it 
in ordc^r to keep with him his general -in -chief, and 
Burnside because of inharmonious relations with 
his superiors, intimated that his resignation might 
be presented at any moment. " If there is any man 
out of hell suffering more than I, I pity him," ex- 
claimed the president with characteristic vividness. 
When Thurlow Weed went with Seward to the 
White House in December, 1862, he says that "we 
found the president deeply depressed and distressed. 
I had never seen him in such a mood." They had 
not been with him long when he broke out : 
" Everything goes wrong. The rebel armies hold 
their own ; Grant is wandering around in Missis- 
sippi ; Burnside manages to keep ahead of Lee ; 
Seymour has carried New York, and if his party 



ANXIOUS 5TEARS 243 

carries and holds many of the Northern stales, we 
shall have to give up the fight, for we can never 
conquer three-fourths of our countrymen scattered 
in front, flank and rear. What shall we do?" It 
was suggested that the correct policy was to wait. 
The man to lead the armies would come forward in 
time. The general who lost a battle should be re- 
placed by another, and so on indefinitely until at 
last one should be found of enough ability and 
skill to overpower the enemy and bring the war to 
an end. 

Bumside, unlike McClellan, was willing to as- 
sume the responsibility for his failures. He bore 
the blame after the battle of Fredericksburg ; he 
would do it again for his "mud march" which 
ended his service as the general in command of the 
Army of the Potomac. Persisting in his determi- 
nation to cross the Rappahannock, he set his army 
in motion late in January, against the advice of the 
authorities at Washington and his staff officers. 
The roads were impassable with deep mud ; hun- 
dreds of horses died in the traces as they tugged 
vainly at the heavy guns, and obstinate in his reso- 
lution to make the advance, he was now compelled 
to admit its impossibility, sullenly turning back 
when the ground, wet with unceasing rains, showed 
no sign of giving him a solid bottom for his move- 
ments. Even before this final unhappy adventure 
Burnside's strength with his men was hopelessly 
shaken. The soldiers lacked faith in him, a con- 
dition of things little likely to bring success to any 



244 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

army. He went to the president with the request 
that a number of his generals should be dis- 
missed for insubordination, else he would offer his 
resignation. The latter alternative, couched in 
agreeable terms — a leave of absence for thirty days 
with a subsequent transfer to the Department of the 
Ohio — was chosen without debate and events 
clearly pointed to "Fighting Joe" Hooker as the 
next man for this high command. 

Hooker's courage had been put to a test on sev- 
eral battle-fields, and his popular title was one that 
he very well deserved. He had protested against 
the useless slaughter of his men at Fredericksburg, 
but when there was no choice, he put spurs to his 
horse and led them against the enemy's works with 
indomitable bravery. His faults, as they had thus 
far developed, had chiefly to do with a tongue over 
which he had imperfect control. He had upon a 
recent occasion stated that the government at 
Washington was in imbecile hands, and that the 
cause of the Union would not thrive until the gov- 
ernment should be administered by a dictator. In 
appointing this man to so important a post, Lin- 
coln again gave evidence of his disposition to for- 
give and to harbor no personal resentments at the 
expense of the national service. He convinced 
himself that Hooker was the man for the work, and 
with frank and paternal advice, dealt out freely on 
so many sides which did as much to win him the 
title of " Father Abraham " as his kindliness to all 
sorts and conditions of men, women and children 



ANXIOUS YEARS 245 

who asked favors of hiin at the White House, he 
raised Hooker to command. 

"I have heard in such a way as to believe it," 
the president observed, "of your recently saying 
that both the army and the government needed a 
dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite 
of it, that I have given you the command. Only 
those generals who gain successes can set up dic- 
tators. What I now ask of you is military success, 
and I will risk the dictatorship. ' ' He was reproved 
for the disposition he had shown while serving un- 
der Burnside to criticise the commanding general, 
and the fear was expressed that this spirit would 
continue to exert its ruinous effects. " Neither you 
nor Napoleon, if he were alive again," said Mr. 
Lincoln, " could get any good out of an army while 
such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of 
rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy 
and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us 
victories." 

" He talks to me like a father," said Hooker 
upon receipt of this epistle, and so in fact Lincoln 
was, the father of his whole people whose greatest 
task and highest service was in allaying the bitter- 
nesses that envy, malice and conflicting counsels 
constantly conspired to excite. 

Hooker at once set to work to account for the 
enormous disparity in the number of troops fur- 
nished the Army of the Potomac, and the number 
actually effective for battle, a matter that had 
caused President Lincoln the greatest solicitude 



246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

while McClellau commanded it. He strove to pre- 
vent desertion and disciplined the various divisions 
until after three months of administrative and 
tactical exercise he boasted that he had ' l the finest 
army on the planet." 

The country, always impatient for action, de- 
manded another forward movement. The army 
rested beside the Rappahannock, and the desire 
for a crossing was still felt. The lessons of Fred- 
ericksburg had been learned, and a detour by way 
of some unguarded point was now proposed and 
executed. The president eagerly followed the 
movement. The entire army was thrown across 
the river to the great surprise of the Confederates, 
at a point far up the stream where there was no 
expectation of it. The opposing forces met in a 
forest springing out of a dense jungle of under- 
growth, in the early days of May, 1863, and but 
for a display of costly indecision by General 
Hooker at critical moments, and a forced march 
and flank attack by ' ' Stonewall ' ' Jackson, the en- 
gagement would have undoubtedly resulted in 
Union success. This was the battle of Chancel - 
lorsville, a severe contest fought without any kind 
of intelligent or alert direction on the Northern 
side, one more reverse to increase the burden of 
President Lincoln's distress at Washington. The 
Army of the Potomac recrossed the river in safety, 
having sustained a loss of more than 17,000 men. 
The Confederates also suffered severely, but all their 
disasters combined did not compare in cost to the 



ANXIOUS YEARS j\7 

misadventure by which "Stonewall" Jackson was 
mortally shot by his own troops while deploying a 
body of them in the darkness on the evening of the 
2d of May. 

The Confederates were now not unnaturally in a 
state of great elation, and the cry of "On to Eich- 
niond," in the North, was drowned with the South 
ern shout of " On to Washington." In spite of the 
loss of Jackson, which was keenly felt, the South, 
after its recent victories, felt a certain degree of in- 
vincibility that made it bold in its designs and 
courageous in the determination rapidly to put 
them into execution. Many felt that Hooker's day 
was done, and that he must make way for another 
general. But he was still threatening to cross the 
river again and avenge himself on Lee, when there 
was unimpeachable information that the Southern 
army had put itself in motion for a daring invasion 
of the North. The leaders boasted that their horses 
would soon drink from the Susquehanna and the 
Delaware. They would ravage the rich farms of 
Pennsylvania, plant the standard of revolt in " My 
Maryland," which might yet "spurn the Northern 
scum," capture Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and 
returning encompass and seize "Washington. The 
Eichmond newspapers announced that the Southern 
purpose was to cut the lines of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad. Following that they nourished a chi- 
merical scheme for setting fire to the anthracite 
coal mines which it was argued would deprive the 



248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

North of fuel, thus everywhere stopping the wheels 
of industry and transportation. 

Hooker's first reckless impulse was to direct his 
army toward Richmond and takeSecessia's capital 
while Lee was absent. To this venturesome and 
romantic design Lincoln interposed positive objec- 
tions, and instructed the Union commander to fol- 
low the Confederate army and contest its progress 
at every point. Hooker performed his part in this 
movement with courage, celerity and intelligence. 
He was on the inside of the arc, and his cavalry 
incessantly annoyed the Southern Hank until Lee 
crossed the river, and with his hosts swept into 
Pennsylvania, for the hist and last time in the war, 
pitching his tents upon free soil. Militiamen, 
hastily gathered together in the threatened states, 
came to meet him, while farmers and villagers and 
their families fled in affright in all directions. 

On the eve of this great crisis, Hooker, who dur- 
ing the advance had done a good deal to retrieve 
his damaged fortunes, offered his resignation, the 
culmination of a long series of unpleasant passages 
with General Halleck. The president used his 
good offices to restore peace, but as Hooker was be- 
ing hoist by his own petard, being criticised openly 
by his subordinates, notably by General Meade, 
and there was no time for discussing the matter, he 
was promptly relieved from duty. He had with- 
held his confidence from Burnside and taken that 
general's place; now by the same rule, Meade be- 
ing the critic, Hooker left the high post in favor of 



xVNXIOUS YEARS 249 

the dissatished subordinate. The president, advis 
ing with his Secretary of War, had aeted with 
admirable decision. It was argued that in add it ion 
to being an efficient general, possessed of ideas for 
the conduct of an army, Meade was a Pennsyl- 
vanian who would feel a pride in defending liis 
own state against a dangerous invader, and that 
action so decided would put an end to the aspira- 
tions of General McClellan's partisans, still stub- 
bornly insisting that if the Union were to be saved, 
their superlative leader must be called back to his 
old place. ' This was on the 28th day of June, 1863. 
The transfer was effected without disturbance to the 
morale of the army, or interference with the execu- 
tion of the general plan of campaign which had 
been formulated by Hooker. 

General Lee was preparing to march upon Har- 
risburg when word reached him that the Army of 
the Potomac had crossed into Maryland, moving 
northward in a fan-shaped concentrated force. 
The question of advance or retreat must now be 
decided by a battle which it was foreseen would be 
one of the great encounters of the war. The move- 
ment at once diverted Lee's attention from the Sus- 
quehanna, his raiding expeditions were called in, 
and the meeting was soon inevitably set for the 
hills and ridges encircling the little south Pennsyl- 
vania town of Gettysburg. The Confederate gen- 
eral chose the place, since it was the centre for 
many important roads that he would soon need to 

1 " Keminiscences of A. Lincoln," p. 129. 



250 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

use in one direction or another. On the first day 
of July the battle began ; the issue was decided on 
the third when Lee, convinced of the necessity of a 
retreat to his old battle-grounds, carried his stores, 
prisoners and guns with him in a leisurely way to 
the river, which, being in flood, he was unable im- 
mediately to cross. The Federal army offered no 
menace to his movement. Meade, satisfied with 
his achievement, although without knowledge of 
the importance of the victory, telegraphed jubi- 
lantly about "driving the invaders from our soil," 
an echo of the boastful utterance that escaped Mc- 
Clellan as he rested upon his laurels at Antietam 
when the Confederate army had once before crossed 
the Potomac. 

Lincoln hoped and expected that Lee would not 
be permitted to return to Virginia. He hung over 
the telegraph instruments in Washington devouring 
the news. " Drive the invaders from our soil!" 
he exclaimed in tones of anguish, his hands falling 
upon his knees. ' ' Drive the invaders from our soil ! 
My God ! Is that all ?" It is all "our soil," ob- 
served the president in his distress. Again and again 
he urged Meade to overtake the Confederate army, 
and his days and nights were passed in the greatest 
anxiety, only to be assured at the end of his time of 
waiting that by dilatoriness and confusion of counsels 
it had been allowed to escape to friendly ground, 
where it must again be pursued with more troops, 
costing more money, more life and more time. "I 
do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the 



ANXIOUS YEAKS 261 

misfortune involved in Lee's escape," said Lincoln 
to Meade, in one of those fatherly letters which 
even the greatest of his generals frequently re- 
ceived, although this one was never sent. "He 
was within your easy grasp, and to have closed 
upon him would in connection with our other late 
successes have ended the war. As it is the war 
will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not 
safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly 
do so south of the river? . . . Your golden 
opportunity is gone, and I am distressed im- 
measurably because of it. " ' Meade had ' ' expend i < 1 
all the skill and toil and blood up to the ripe 
harvest," said the president to General O. O. How 
ard, " and then let the crop go to waste." a 

In the meantime the Federal cause was again to 
be invigorated by some brilliant feats of arms in 
the West, which in a little while gave an entirely 
new complexion to the operations of the Army of 
the Potomac, bringing forward the generals who 
were to terminate the war. Cool, methodical and 
soldier-like, except for his intemperance, Grant had 
yet done little to presage his future career. His 
operations were by no means futile, but there was 
what seemed to Lincoln and other distant spectators 
in Washington, a great deal of aimless movement 
hither and thither, which might or might not in 
the end prove of practical avail. By the capture of 
Fort Donelson early in 1862, followed by his part 

1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 369. 
'Ibid., p. 373. 



252 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

in the victory at Shiloh, his name was brought for- 
ward prominently. General Halleck's coming to 
Washington left him the man in principal com- 
mand in the West, and the opportunity was now 
oifered him to gain that distinction which led to 
his elevation to the highest place in the gift of Con- 
gress and the president. His object was to clear 
the Mississippi, which was free above Vicksburg 
and which, since the capture of New Orleans, was 
in Federal control south of Port Hudson. Here was 
a distance of two hundred miles still open to the 
traffic of the Confederates. Without hindrance 
they were crossing this belt to the great area, which 
was the principal source of supply for their grain 
and beef, and they were determined to hold the im- 
portant watercourse and their highways to the 
Southwest. The North, on its side, realized that if 
it could once control the river and split the Con- 
federacy into separate parts, the military task would 
be greatly simplified, and by slow attrition, if by 
no other means, the cotton country supported by 
Virginia would be subdued through the stopping 
up of the sources of its food. 

Grant, by patient pursuit of his object, which 
was the reduction of Vicksburg, strongly fortified 
and garrisoned, had taken the steps preliminary to 
his advance upon the city. He aimed at first to 
carry the works by assault, but his attempts were 
so unsuccessful that he settled himself for a pro- 
longed siege. His force, having been increased, he 
closely invested the place and by sapping and 



ANXIOUS YEARS 253 

mining and skilful gunnery brought the final <la\ 
nearer and nearer without risk of opposition from 
any body of troops on the outside formidable enough 
to cause him uneasiness. The citizens and the gar- 
rison were at last in sore straits for the uecessaries 
of life, and the outlook being hopeless, on the \ r ei \ 
day Pickett's brave chargers we're sent reeling back 
from the stone wall at Gettysburg, July 3d, the 
city was asking for terms. General Grant's reply 
was " unconditional surrender." About 30,000 
men laid down their arms, and Vicksburg passed 
into Union hands, henceforward to remain seem civ 
in Federal possession. A few days later Port 
Hudson surrendered to Banks, and it really seemed 
as though the turning point in the war had been 
reached at last. On the 16th of July a vessel laden 
with merchandise arrived at New Orleans direct 
from St. Louis, having passed over the entire route 
unchallenged. Lincoln could now frame his famous 
boast that the Mississippi again went i ' un vexed to 
the sea," and writing to Grant, whom he did not 
remember ever to have met personally, he made 
"grateful acknowledgment" of "the almost in- 
estimable service ' ' which that general of rising for- 
tunes had done his country. 

The next task of importance in the West was to 
take the Confederates in hand in eastern Tennessee, 
and Grant's genius was soon actively employed in 
that field. Rosecrans had been operating for some 
time at the head of the Army of the Cumberland in 
the design of freeing the country of the enemy, the 



254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

capture of Chattanooga being the special object in 
contemplation. This was admitted to be a very 
difficult undertaking, and the general was a rather 
unreliable and obstreperous man who had many of 
the defects of McClellan in never being ready to 
move. He forfeited his respect with Halleck and 
the authorities in Washington by the tone of his 
dispatches, but performed a feat of the greatest 
strategic importance in forcing Bragg to evacuate 
Chattanooga without a fight in 1863. Rosecrans 
reported the foe in flight and firmly believed that 
he had won a bloodless victory, of which idea he 
was entirely disabused when the Confederates in 
great bodies massed themselves for battle on a field 
of their own choosing at Chickamauga. Here, in 
one of the fiercest engagements, in spite of the indi- 
vidual gallantry of General Thomas, who stood like 
a rock against every assault upon his position, 
Rosecrans met a disastrous reverse, and was com- 
pelled to withdraw to the city, where the enemy 
practically besieged him for many weeks, his only 
lines of communication being through difficult 
mountain passes. 

The president was in great anxiety lest Rosecrans 
would be compelled to surrender the city and resign 
all the advantages which had been won by a long, 
onerous and costly campaign. The general him- 
self was despondent to the last degree, his state of 
mind being reflected in his messages to the War 
Department. In October, Secretary Stanton made a 
journey west on the president's advice and arranged 



ANXIOUS YEARS 255 

a personal meeting at Louisville with the hero of 
Vicksburg. Upon this occasion Grant was pre- 
sented with an order creating the new military 
department of the Mississippi and appointing him 
commander-in-chief of the division, thus concen- 
trating under one control the three older depart 
ments of the Ohio, the Cumberland and the Ten- 
nessee. 

It was left with Grant to decide whether Thomas 
should supersede Eosecrans at Chattanooga. This 
point required no great amount of discussion in the 
mind of the new commander. Thomas was imme- 
diately raised to Rosecrans' place. Grant put him- 
self in motion at once for the critical point, and 
made such disposition of the troops in the vicinity 
that they would assist in forwarding his plans for 
the early relief of the city. It was not long before 
the necessary arrangements were complete for the 
most brilliant victory of the war, and one of the 
most picturesque and singular military engage- 
ments fought anywhere upon a modern battle-field. 
The battle "above the clouds," on Lookout 
Mountain, over whose top a bank of mist had 
settled to obscure the movements of the troops from 
spectators below, and the irresistible sweep of the 
Federal regiments over the Confederate trenches 
and up the slopes of Missionary Ridge, bristling 
with guns and serried with rifle-pits, bringing 
thousands of Southern prisoners inside the Union 
lines to be shelled by their own batteries, will Ion- 
serve to quicken the pulses of the most sluggish 



256 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

reader of history. Here Grant, Sherman and 
Sheridan fought together for the first time and 
built the foundations for that mutual feeling of 
respect and trust which operated so powerfully to 
Federal advantage in the last year of the war. 

Undoubtedly one reason for the Confederates' 
inglorious failure to resist the Union advance on 
Missionary Ridge was the withdrawal of Long- 
street, with a portion of the investing forces, for an 
attack upon Knoxville, just as that able and reso- 
lute general's coming had been responsible for 
many of the brilliant performances of the Southern 
army in the battle of Chickamauga. It was Presi- 
dent Lincoln's favorite design to drive the Con- 
federates from east Tennessee, both because the hill 
country there was populated by many loyal Union 
families, and because it contained some of the most 
important subsistence depots of the enemy and was 
the seat of nitre beds, used for the manufacture of 
gunpowder. If this section could be captured and 
held the South would be, in Mr. Lincoln's apt 
phrase, "like an animal with a thorn in its 
vitals." The overwhelming triumph of Grant at 
Chattanooga quickly gave affairs a better appear- 
ance at Knoxville. Longstreet was compelled, 
after a sanguinary assault, to withdraw his forces, 
and Tennessee was relatively free from molestation 
from the Confederate armies during the ensuing 
winter. 

Meade, at the head of the army of the Potomac 
having allowed Lee to escape in safety after Gettys- 



ANXIOUS YEARS 



257 



burg, added nothing to Federal glories in the 
autumn or winter, but there was abundant cause 
for, congratulation in the North. Already in 
August, Mr. Lincoln had written to J. C. Conkling: 
"The signs look better. The Father of Waters 
again goes unvexed to the sea. . . . It is hard 
to say that anything has been more bravely and 
well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettys- 
burg and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must 
Uncle Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the 
watery margins they have been present. Not only 
on the deep sea, the broad bay and the rapid river, 
but also up the narrow muddy bayou and wherever 
the ground was a little damp they have been and 
made their tracks. Thanks to all, for the great 
republic, for the principle it lives by and keeps 
alive — for man's vast future — thanks to all. Peace 
does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will 
come soon and come to stay ; and so come as to be 
worth the keeping in all future time." 

The year 1862 had gone out in a blaze of Con- 
federate triumphs ; as the year 1863 faded from 
view the balance was clearly on the Northern side. 
The victories at Chattanooga following upon his 
feat at Vicksburg had directed all eyes to General 
Grant, and on the 26th day of February, 1861, the 
president approving three days later, a bill passed 
Congress reviving the grade of lieutenant-general 
for "that major-general most distinguished for 
courage, skill and ability," who being designated 
by the president would take command of all the 



258 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

armies of the United States. This description 
fitted no other except Grant. He was at once 
nominated for the post, confirmed by the Senate 
and directed to report at the War Office in Wash- 
ington. On the 8th of March, he arrived in the 
capital ; formally received his new commission 
from the president's hands ; unlike all his pred- 
ecessors in high military office since the war had 
begun, avoided all social attention, even declining 
to attend a dinner to which he was invited by Mrs. 
Lincoln on the ground that his business called him 
away ; made a hasty trip to settle his affairs in 
connection with the Western army, and returning 
to Washington with a tooth brush as his sole article 
of personal impedimenta, took his place at once at 
the head of the troops in Virginia. The Army 
of the Potomac was now large, strong and well 
seasoned, and that body of troops which opposed it 
was of diminishing efficiency through the loss of 
the flower of its regiments in the disastrous in- 
vasion of Pennsylvania. What it chiefly needed 
was a vigorous leader and that it was now to have 
in abundant measure. 

Never was the commander of a great army in a 
great war confronted by difficulties such as those 
that had beset the pathway of President Lincoln. 
Without a trained body of fighting men it was 
necessary to assemble them and conduct the cam- 
paigns with due regard for democratic systems of 
government. The Southern leaders, having no 
traditions to maintain, might organize an oligarchy, 



ANXIOUS YEARS 259 

as they virtually did, and conduct the war with 
the important advantage of autocratic manage- 
ment. Once embarked for the contest, if they did 
not win it, the treatment reserved for traitors was 
felt to be their certain fate, for which reason the 
end justified questionable methods. Lincoln on the 
other hand had a constitution to obey, traditions 
to respect and millions of men universally en- 
franchised to consult at stated periods of time. 
He must feel his way very carefully. There were 
large bodies of Northern people ready to criticise 
and repudiate his acts and they, through the 
ballot box, might become as potent a factor to em- 
barrass his plans as the Confederate army. But he 
gained strength and courage as the war progressed. 
He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, the draft 
and conscription system was resorted to for the re- 
cruitment of the army that could no longer be 
reinforced with sufficient speed by volunteers, 
although the policy led to dangerous riots, and 
policies were perforce adopted which were the sub- 
ject of much bitter contention. The government 
came to be known in hostile quarters as the 
" Washington despotism," but it continued to 
gather power without which nothing of great value 
could have been effected. 

The great curse of the service was the system 
of civilian appointments. West Point could not 
supply enough practiced men to command the 
troops and even its graduates were not always 
virtuous exemplars for other men. Abolitionists, 



260 ABBAHAM LINCOLN 

explorers, lawyers and politicians suddenly became 
generals to criticise each other, the general-in- 
chief, the president and Congress. They conferred 
with politicians in their camps, composed and des- 
patched political letters and directed campaigns 
with a mind for partisan consequences. Generals 
resigned when juniors were put in command over 
their heads, eastern dandies would not willingly 
fight for western commanders ; and the service was 
in a state of disgraceful chaos as measured by the 
standards of military organization in European 
countries. Grant came upon the scene to put an 
end to all such absurdities although it must be said 
in fairness to his immediate predecessor that recent 
wholesome leadership and experience of war had 
already made the Army of the Potomac a more 
efficient military body than ever before. 

The country had had no lieutenant-general since 
Washington. It was now very clear, as a compli- 
mentary spectator declared that, while " Wash- 
ington made the country, Grant was making it over 
again and putting in all the modern improvements." 

No more did newsboys vend their journals to the 
soldiers in the midst of battle, and no more did the 
Confederates when they captured a Federal depot 
of stores feast upon oranges, lemons, jam, white 
and brown sugar, eggs preserved in salt, and the 
useless luxuries that McClellan provided for his 
soldiers. It was now war in grim earnest and on a 
gigantic scale. Severe discipline prevailed, rec- 
reancy of duty was punished by shooting at sight, 



ANXIOUS YEARS 261 

and the Army of the Potomac purged of its i>ri<l< i, rid 
of its prejudices in favor of one or another Leader, 
sullen, but obedient and determined, went forward 
to accomplish its mission. Six generals had led it 
against Kichmond — McDowell, McClellan, Pope, 
Burnside, Hooker and Meade, all by different 
routes. None had approached so near the seat of 
government of the Confederacy as McClellan in the 
first year of the war. Now Grant came to com 
maud, and by personal equanimity and soldierly 
tactics, slowly and at great cost, but none the less 
surely, led his army up to the city so long the ob- 
ject of Federal desire. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 

In looking back upon the war, the events that 
preceded it and those which ensued, it seems so 
clear that the leading object of the struggle was the 
abolition of slavery, it is difficult to understand the 
curious manner in which the issue was concealed 
while the struggle was in progress. It was at the 
moment most positively not a war for the negro. 
Upon that issue troops could not have been enlisted 
and battles could not have been won, a fact that 
none knew so well as that shrewd political observer, 
Abraham Lincoln. It is by no means certain that 
he would have undertaken such a war himself with 
more than a small part of the zeal popularly 
ascribed to him as the emancipator. It was no 
well-defined purpose, long cherished, that gave the 
slave his freedom, but chance and the inevitable 
drift of political events. It is true that Lincoln did 
much to guide the movement on its course, but it 
was only the determined resistance of the Southern 
people to all proposals for their return to the Union, 
which led to emancipation at that particular period 
in our national history. Mr. Lincoln was little 
prepossessed on this question when it was balanced 
against the larger question of preserving the Union. 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 263 

He had none of those predilections of the Aboli- 
tionists for whom the war was an anti-slavery war. 
He could not say with Garrison : "This Union is a 
lie ; the American Union is a sham, an imposture, 
a covenant with death, an agreement with hell," so 
long as human bondage continued to exist within 
the borders of the republic. The negro was suffer- 
ing in his shackles and would be allowed still to 
suffer unless they might be struck from him by 
accident, as a matter of military expediency. 

The negroes, as the Federal troops moved over 
the Potomac into Virginia, welcomed them as 
"Bobolitionists," but not many of the Northern 
soldiers felt that they were brothers come to release 
the blacks from slavery. In the early years of the 
war, if accounts do not err, during the entire period 
McClellan commanded the Arniy of the Potomac, 
"John Brown's Body " was a forbidden air among 
the regimental bands. The Hutchinsons were 
driven from Union camps for singing abolition 
songs, and in so far as the Northern army interested 
itself at all in the slavery question, it was by the use 
of force to return to their Southern masters fugitives 
seeking shelter in Union lines. While the infor- 
mation they possessed, especially respecting the 
roads and means of communication, if they were 
not to be employed as laborers or armed as soldiers, 
should have been of inestimable service to the Fed- 
erals, the North avoided the appearance of a desire 
to raise the negroes from the plane of chattels to the 
rank of human beings. A loyal white man would 



264 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

have been welcomed to the army ; the loyal black 
man was sent back to continue his unrequited toil 
for a strong enemy. From both sides, from those 
who would let the negro alone, and those who would 
place a musket in his hands and fight battles with 
the express purpose of destroying slavery, the most 
urgent and angry representations came to the presi- 
dent. The rage of the Abolitionists because Mr. 
Lincoln had not emancipated the slaves instantly 
was intense. Their heroes were John C. Fremont 
and John Brown. To Wendell Phillips the presi- 
dent was "a first-rate second-rate man.' ? In 1862 
at a public meeting in Washington he spoke as 
follows : 

" Gentlemen of Washington ! you have spent for 
us two million dollars per day. You bury two 
regiments a month, two thousand men by disease 
without a battle. You rob every laboring man of 
. one-half of his pay for the next thirty years by 
your taxes. You place the curse of intolerable 
taxation on every cradle for the next generation. 
What do you give us in return 1 What is the other 
side of the balance sheet ? The North has poured 
out its blood and money like water ; it has leveled 
every fence of constitutional privilege, and Abra- 
ham Lincoln sits to-day a more unlimited despot 
than the world knows this side of China. What 
does he render the North for this unbounded confi- 
dence? Show us something, or I tell you that 
within two years the indignant reaction of the peo- 
ple will hurl the cabinet in contempt from their 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAK 265 

seats, and the devils that went out from yonder cap 
ital, for there has been no sweeping or garnishing 
will come back seven times stronger, for I do not 
believe that Jefferson Davis, driven down to the 
Gulf, will go down to the waters and perish as cer- 
tain brutes mentioned in the Gospel did." 

Such language represents one extreme of opinion 
held in the loyal states which Mr. Lincoln was 
compelled to reckon with; the other extreme is 
typified in the remark of the Baltimore woman to 
an Englishman that if she and a few of her friends 
could catch Wendell Phillips, they would break 
every bone in his body. The border state news 
papers prescribed a punishment for him and Garri- 
son no less severe than that to be meted out to 
Davis and Floyd. The Nashville Union, the organ 
of Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Ten- 
nessee, denounced Phillips as a "flashy, blasphe- 
mous incendiary and half crazed Jacobin, as vile a 
disunionist as Jeff Davis or William L. Yancey." 

The question, which as we now clearly perceive 
was the war's principal cause, could not be per- 
manently put aside. General Benjamin F. Butler 
who has been called the Yankee Danton since he 
lived by that Frenchman's rule, " Paudace, Paudace 
toujours Paudace," had already taken the initial 
step in Virginia. Three slaves came to him while 
he was in command at Fort Monroe in May, 1861. 
Their owner demanded their return under the pro- 
visions of the fugitive slave law. As Virginia 
had publicly declared herself to be a part of the 



266 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Union no longer, Butler rather humorously sug- 
gested that the master could not enjoy the benefits 
of a United States law unless he should first take an 
oath of allegiance. Many negro slaves were being 
impressed by the Confederate commanders for dig- 
ging trenches and building batteries, and Butler 
soon declared them " contraband of war" and 
therefore confiscable. By the first of August he 
had not less than nine hundred negroes usefully 
employed in and around the fort. 

This idea was regarded as a very happy one. 
Eeleased slaves were soon everywhere in the North 
known as " contrabands. " General Butler had no 
authority but his own for this action. Neverthe- 
less the president did not repudiate the policy, al- 
though he was early obliged openly to disavow the 
intention of becoming an emancipator. His first 
and most pronounced utterance in this sense ac- 
companied his repeal of the order by which 
Fremont in Missouri in August, 1861, had declared 
free the slaves of all persons taking part in re- 
bellion in the district under his military control. 
To such negroes, certificates of freedom would be 
issued from his headquarters. This measure in the 
light of later events, seems to have been very far 
from unreasonable, and it met the enthusiastic ap- 
proval of large numbers of people in the Northern 
states. At Washington the order was accepted as 
a mere political manifesto. It was well ahead of 
the average state of public opinion at the time. 
Congress had very lately passed a confiscation act 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 267 

which legitimized the seizure of slaves used by 
their owners in aid of Confederate military opera- 
tions, and General Fremont, to the deep disgnsl of 
the Abolitionists, was instructed to modify his 
policy until it should conform with the terms of 
that law. Beyond a doubt the rescission of this ill 
considered order was expedient and necessary, since 
an entire company of volunteers had thrown down 
their arms upon receiving the news from Missouri. 
Kentucky was on the point of seceding, and if she 
should go, President Lincoln thought it only a 
question of weeks, or perhaps days, when Maryland 
and Missouri would take their departure also. 1 
Popular sentiment was expressed in these homely 
verses of a humorist : 

11 To the flag we are pledged, all its foes we abhor, 
And we ain't for the nigger, but are for the war." 

The excitement in Fremont's district had scarcely 
subsided, when the question assumed a very ugly 
appearance in the South. The seacoast expedi- 
tions, notably the movement against Port Royal, 
brought large bodies of slaves into the Federal 
camps. The owners had fled and the negroes, left 
to their own devices, found themselves helpless and 
destitute inside the Union lines. Mr. Cameron had 
written, printed and put into the mails his first re- 
port as Secretary of War in December, 1861, with- 
out consultation with the president, it was believed, 
stealthily and in full knowledge that his recom- 
1 Nicolay and Hay, Vol. IV, p. 422. 



268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

niendations would be disapproved. With Port 
Royal in niind he recommended the general arming 
of negroes, declaring that the Federals had as 
clear a right to employ slaves taken from the enemy 
as to use captured gunpowder. The pamphlets 
were recalled by the president by telegraph, when 
their contents came to his notice, and the state- 
ments of the secretary were modified in a material 
way, though not without creating some unpleasant- 
ness in his family of official advisers. 

Despite the president's vigilance, General David 
Hunter, who was rapidly extending the sphere of 
his control on the coast line of Georgia, South 
Carolina and Florida, was about to follow the very 
unwholesome example of Fremont. On the 9th 
of May, 1862, he issued an order on his sole per- 
sonal responsibility declaring that, " slavery and 
martial law in a free country are altogether in- 
compatible. The persons in these three states- 
Georgia, Florida and South Carolina — heretofore 
held as slaves are therefore declared forever free." 
Lincoln repudiated this order immediately, and in 
the most positive terms. Secretary Chase, who in- 
tervened in Hunter's behalf, was informed by the 
president that "no commanding general shall do 
such a thing upon my responsibility without con- 
sulting me," and a proclamation was issued pub- 
licly declaring the order void and of no effect. 
"I further make it known," the president con- 
tinued, " that whether it be competent for me as 
commander-in-chief of the army and navy to de- 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 269 

clare the slaves of any state or states free, and 
whether at any time in any case it shall have be- 
come a necessity indispensable to the maintenance 
of the government to exercise such a supposed 
power, are questions which under my responsibility 
I reserve to myself and which I cannot feel justified 
in leaving to the decision of commanders in the 
field." 

Hunter did not content himself with the eman- 
cipation of the negro ; he gave his attention also 
to the employment of the freedmen in the quarter- 
master's department and to arming them. He had 
unavailingly appealed to Washington for rein- 
forcements, and thereupon began to organize the 
"South Carolina Regiments of Colored Infantry." 
No one could be found to command the negroes after 
they were accoutred. They were the objects of 
ridicule by the white soldiers beside whom they 
were to fight, and the general who soon came to be 
known as "Black" David Hunter was compelled 
to assign his own nephew to the new contingent. ' 

Hunter's course was generally and acrimoniously 
discussed in the Northern newspapers, and by the 
people at large, who had already declared that they 
would not fight "for the nigger " ; they added now 
that they would not fight "with the nigger." Con- 
gress asked the Secretary of War for information 
concerning the episode, and Mr. Stanton referred 
the question to Hunter, who replied that his ex- 
periment had been " a complete and even marvel - 
1 Charles G. Halpine, "Baked Meats," p. 176. 



270 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

ous success," contriving to write so tactful and 
amusing a letter about fugitive slaves and " fugi- 
tive masters," that his critics were effectually dis- 
comfited. Nevertheless the arming of negroes at 
Port Eoyal led to no important immediate result, 
and the blacks, fearing that they were to be used 
as buffers for white soldiers and taken in captivity 
to Cuba, were no more enamored of slavery under 
Hunter and Lincoln, than under Jefferson Davis. 
The setbacks were only temporary, however, and 
the movement gained headway steadily. Butler 
organized colored regiments at New Orleans, and 
commanders in Kansas followed what had at first 
seemed to be a daring example. Lincoln, rather 
wary, although always observant of the changing 
directions of public opinion, soon gave the pro- 
posal his earnest encouragement, and as early as 
in May, 1863, a special bureau was established in 
connection with the War Department to supervise 
the recruitment of colored troops. In December, 
1863, there were 50,000 negroes under arms and 
when the war closed nearly 125,000 were employed 
in different branches of the service in the Federal 
uniform. 

The Confederates furiously denounced the arming 
of the negroes. The Savannah Republican denounced 
Hunter as "the cold-blooded abolition miscreant, 
who from his headquarters at Hilton Head, is en- 
gaged in executing the bloody and savage behests 
of the imperial gorilla who, from his throne of 
human bones at Washington, rules, reigns and riots 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR L>71 

over the destinies of the brutish and degraded 
North." The officers in command of black troops 
were branded as outlaws. If they were captured 
they were to be treated, not as prisoners of war, 
but as common felons to be hanged to trees and 
telegraph poles. To be killed by a negro was to 
the Southern cavaliers the most opprobrious of 
deaths. To be shot by the Irish and Germans, the 
hirelings of the Northern city slums, was sufficiently 
humiliating, but for masters to face armed bodies 
of their former slaves who, a generation or two be- 
fore, had been savages in Africa, and were still not 
better than horses in South Carolina, was a viola- 
tion, it was gravely alleged, of the rules of civilized 
warfare. When they came into contact with the 
Confederates in battle, the negro soldiers were often 
treated with needless severity. The fire of the 
enemy was likely to be concentrated upon the 
black battalions when their commanders put them 
forward in a military movement, and negroes taken 
on the field, suffered indignities and cruelties in 
imprisonment which promptly aroused the resent- 
ment of Northern Abolitionists. Frederick Doug- 
lass, who was conveyed to the White House in the 
president's carriage " to take tea," appealed in be- 
half of his fellow blacks. If they served in the 
Federal uniform and were captured, he said that 
they should receive the treatment accorded to pris- 
oners of war. It is certain that in some brutal in- 
stances, as at Fort Pillow, no quarter was given, 
and negroes were killed in cold blood. The presi- 



272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dent was unwilling to retaliate, alleging that he 
never could be an instrument to punish innocent 
men for crimes committed by guilty ones out of his 
reach. Nevertheless, he was induced to issue an 
order on July 30, 1863, commanding " that for every 
soldier of the United States killed in violation of 
the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed ; 
and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold 
into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard 
labor on the public works, and continued at such 
labor until the other shall be released, and receive 
the treatment due to a prisoner of war." 

Singularly enough it was not a long time until 
the Southern leaders seriously proposed to arm the 
negroes for use in the Confederate army, having ex- 
hausted their resources in other directions, when 
the Northern policy must have seemed somewhat 
less violative of the laws of polite warfare. In the 
North, too, where the draft was being resorted to 
and men were taken off to war unwillingly, the 
business of slaughter being reduced to scientific pre- 
cision, there was a diminishing disposition to in- 
quire who was wearing the uniform and carrying 
Federal guns. Private Miles O'Eeilly gave expres- 
sion to a thought that had taken hold of large num- 
bers of men : 



Some say it is a burnm' shame 
To make the naygurs fight, 

An' that the thrade o' hem' kilt 
Belongs but to the white ; 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 273 

But as for me ' upon me sowl ' 

So liberal are we here, 
I'll let Sambo be murthered in place o' meself 

On every day in the year. ' ' 



To the demand that the negro regiments be dis- 
banded, which was incorporated in the Democratic 
platform of 1864, Mr. Lincoln responded thai be 
would not and could not be a party to such a trans 
action. "You say you will not fight to free ne- 
groes," he wrote to one who had criticised the 
policy. "Some of them seem willing to fight for 
you." They make themselves useful, he observed, 
in assisting Union prisoners to escape, and in hold- 
ing territory and posts abandoned by the enemy, 
especially in hot and sickly neighborhoods. South- 
ern success, "if you fling the compulsory labor of 
millions of black men into their side of the scale,*' 
the president believed to be inevitable. Should these 
soldiers be returned to slavery, he remarked with 
some force, " I should deserve to be damned in time 
and eternity." 

In the same way public opinion in the "North 
upon the question of emancipation was undergoing 
a material transformation. Lincoln was not a step 
behind the people, if he did not already lead them. 
He at first stopped short of the policy he was 
pleased afterward to adopt, and lingered long over 
the proposal for compensated emancipation. The 
Abolitionists were indisposed to assist him, even in 
the discussion of such a proposition. Their senti- 



274 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ments had been expressed by Hinton Rowan 
Helper. u Preposterous idea!" he exclaimed. 
u Shall we pat the bloodhounds for the sake of do- 
ing them a favor 1 Shall we fee the curs of slavery 
to make them rich at our expense? Pay these 
whelps for the privilege of converting them into 
decent, honest, upright men?" 

Already in November, President Lincoln had 
made a proposal to Delaware for gradual emanci- 
pation, with the assistance of the Federal govern- 
ment. By the census of 1860, that little state was 
accredited with 1,798 slaves which, valued at $400 
each would be worth $719,200. It was suggested 
that if Delaware would take this amount in six per 
cent, bonds of the United States, payable in thirty - 
one equal annual instalments, and free all her slaves 
in thirty-one years, or by New Year's day, 1893, a 
difficult problem would be satisfactorily solved. 
The pro -slavery men in the Delaware legislature 
indignantly rejected the proposition, and declared 
that when they wished to extinguish their institution 
they would do it upon their own motion and in their 
own way. 

In his first annual message to Congress in 
December, 1861, the president presented his views 
more formally, although he had still not reduced 
them to a definite system. He expressed the wish 
that the slaves who were coming into the Union 
camps to complicate the purely military problem, 
should be accepted from the states, "according 
to some mode of valuation in lieu, pro tanto, of 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 276 

direct taxes," and emancipated. At the same time 
he urged that arrangements be concluded lor the 
colonization of the slaves as well as the free colored 
people, "at some place or places in a climate con 
genial to them." At the moment his mind was 
directed to Liberia and Hayti, to which negro states 
he desired that the United States should accredit 
diplomatic representatives, but he also had in pros- 
pect the acquisition of Southern continental terri- 
tory by purchase in some such way as Louisiana 
had been added to the American domain. 

These recommendations having fallen upon un- 
fruitful ground, the president sent a special message 
to Congress on March 6, 1862. He urged the passage 
of a joint resolution by both houses to this effect : 
11 Resolved, That the United States ought to cooper- 
ate with any state which may adoj)t gradual 
abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pe- 
cuniary aid to be used by such state in its dis- 
cretion to compensate for the inconveniences, 
public and private, produced by such change of 
system. ' 7 

A few days later, a number of congressmen from 
the border states came to the executive mansion for 
an interview with the president, on which occasion 
he aimed to clear their minds of some of their 
prejudices against emancipation, but with very 
indifferent success. He explained that slavery was 
a state institution, and no state could be compelled 
to do in regard to it that which was against its will. 
But slaves were coming into the Union camps; 



276 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

their owners complained and protested, and irrita- 
tion from this source was increasing so rapidly, 
that it threatened serious results. A congressman 
from Maryland said that his state would be willing 
to give up the system, if the people were paid for 
their negroes, and could get rid of the race with 
which, in a condition of freedom, they were not 
inclined to live. Mr. Lincoln declared that his 
double policy of compensation and colonization 
answered these objections, and there could be no 
coercion while he was in the White House, which 
he would be for three years yet, unless he should be 
" expelled by the act of God or the Confederate 
armies." 

In April, the resolution passed both houses of 
Congress, and the president, as he signed it, was 
filled with hope that its recommendations would be 
heeded. Those who antagonized the measure on 
the ground of expense, were asked to remember 
that the cost of the war was two millions of dollars 
per diem. What must be expended to prosecute it 
for less than twelve hours, if applied to the new 
purpose, would free all the slaves in Delaware. 
In Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and 
the District of Columbia, where there were 432,622 
slaves, the price of purchase and emancipation at 
$400 each would be $173,048,800, a sum not in 
excess of what the government was sinking and 
wasting in war in eighty-seven days. 

But the border states made no response to the 
invitation contained in the resolution. A law of 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 277 

positive value was enacted by Congress a Little 
later, when the work of the Compromises of L850 

was completed, and slavery was abolished in the 
District of Columbia. There were still 3,181 slaves 
in the capital of the United States, and setting a 
good example to the states Congress offered to paj 
the owners at the rate of $300 per head. In the 
same bill $100,000 were appropriated to encourage 
the emigration of negroes to Liberia and Hayti. 

General Hunter's emancipation proclamation was 
timed rudely to interrupt the negotiations with the 
border state leaders, and Mr. Lincoln took occasion 
on May 19th, in repudiating the action of that 
commander to put in another plea for his scheme 
for freedom with compensation. "The change it 
contemplates," he observed, "would come gently 
as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking 
anything. Will you not embrace it? So mi uh 
good has not been done by one effort in all past 
time, as in the providence of God, it is now your 
high privilege to do." There was still no motion in 
the border states seriously to consider, much less to 
adopt, the recommendations of the president, and 
on July 12, 1862, he again appealed to their con- 
gressmen. ' ' How much better for you and for your 
people," said he, "to take the step which at once 
shortens the war and secures substantial com \ >ensat ion 
for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other 
event. How much better to thus save the money, 
which else we sink forever in war. How much 
better to do it while we can, lest the war, ere long, 



278 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

render us pecuniarily unable to do it." He was 
now suggesting the establishment of negro colonies 
in South America, but his appeals again fell upon 
deaf ears, and but a small number of men in the 
state congressional delegations went to their homes 
with sympathetic intention of exerting their in- 
fluence in behalf of emancipation. The line of 
division that Lincoln had remarked many years 
before in his discussion of the question with 
Southern men, was still clearly defined. " You 
think slavery right while I think it wrong," he was 
wont to say, and neither side, even in the states^ 
still loyal parts of the same Union, had yet abated 
very much of the faith that was in them on this 
question. 

As the prospect of further accessions to the Con- 
federacy by the secession of the border states 
diminished, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland 
being made secure by the movements of the Fed- 
eral armies, and the temper of New England and 
the urgent demands of religious bodies in all parts 
of the North came to reinforce the insistency of the 
old line Abolitionists, Lincoln felt his way care- 
fully toward general emancipation as a military 
policy. For long he doubted his constitutional 
right to make the slaves free. He correctly argued 
that a mere declaration that they were free would 
not make them free. He likened the act, with his 
characteristic facility in allusion to the case of the 
boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would 
have if he called the tail a leg, replied five, to 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAS 279 

which the natural response was that calling a bail a 
leg did not make it a leg. "I do not wanl bo 
issue a document that the whole world will Bee 
must necessarily be inoperative like the Pope's bull 
against the comet," he told the spokesman for a 
large body of black-coated clerics, who sought 
audience of him on the subject in 1862. But he 
continued with that pious faith in his mission, 
which was sometimes characteristic of him, "the 
subject is on my mind by day and night, more 
than any other, and whatever shall appear to be 
God's will I will do." 

Greeley, in the meantime, had fussed himself into 
a state of great uneasiness lest the war would be 
finished without advantage to the negro. He h;id 
discharged an editorial broadside at the presid« q1 
through the Tribune in August, 1862, which drew a 
letter from Mr. Lincoln, and brought the editor to 
Washington. "If there be those who would not 
save the Union unless they could at the same time 
save slavery, I do not agree with them," said Lin- 
coln in language that no man could misconstrue. 
"If there be those who would not save the Union 
unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, 
I do not agree with them. My paramount object 
in this struggle is to save the Union and is not 
either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could 
save the Union without freeing any slave, I would 
do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all the 
slaves, I would do it ; and if I could save it by 
freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also 



280 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

do that. What I do about slavery and the colored 
race, I do because I believe it helps to save the 
Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear, because I do 
not believe it would help to save the Union." ' 

" Suppose I do that," said Lincoln to Greeley 
when the editor in conversation defended a pro- 
posal for general emancipation. ' l There are now 
20,000 of our muskets on the shoulders of Ken- 
tuckians who are bravely fighting our battles. 
Every one of them will be thrown down or carried 
over to the rebels." 

" Let them do it," said Greeley. " The cause of 
the Union will be stronger if Kentucky should 
secede with the rest, than it is now." 

"Oh, I can't think that," remarked Lincoln, as 
he concluded the discussion, at the same moment 
pondering in his own mind's sanctuary the measure 
that he had long resisted, and was now very soon 
at the ripe time to adopt and make the central act 
of his administration. 

The first draft of the emancipation proclamation 
was written upon four half sheets of official fools- 
cap paper, on board the steamboat, as the president 
was returning from his visit to McClellan in the 
Peninsula. That general in a letter to Lincoln, 
dated July 7, 1862, had advised the president very 
freely as to what must and must not be done for the 
common weal. He was convinced, for example, 
that the "forcible abolition of slavery should not 
be contemplated for a moment," and asserted that 
1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 227. 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 281 

"a declaration of radical views especially upon 
slavery will rapidly disintegrate our present 
armies," without in any manner interrupting the 
steady and logical flow of events, all the time 
leading the president nearer and nearer to that 
step, deliberately taken, by w T hich the negroes in 
all the seceded states were proclaimed free men. 
While the president reiterated that " the salvation 
of the nation was of vastly more consequence than 
the destruction of slavery," and that the task, if 
he should live to complete it, for which posterity 
would venerate his administration, would be the 
suppression of the rebellion and not emancipation, 
he was rapidly coming to the point where he could 
regard the liberation of the slaves as a necessary 
war measure. He coolly weighed the good and 
evil consequences of his act, viewed solely as an 
agency in bringing the war to an end, independent 
of moral considerations. He knew that many 
would regard a proclamation emancipating the 
slaves as a surrender to the Abolitionists. His 
party would lose some elections and a few generals 
and soldiers. The South would amalgamate more 
closely and fight more stubbornly when the war 
was avowedly conducted against property. "My 
friends pretend I am now carrying on this war for 
the sole purpose of abolition," said the president to 
Governor Eandall of Wisconsin. "So long as I 
am president it shall be carried on for the sole pur- 
pose of restoring the Union. But no human power 
can subdue this trouble without the use of the 



282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

emancipation policy and every other policy cal- 
culated to weaken the moral and physical forces of 
the rebellion." 

To those who blamed him for tardiness, he said 
that they forgot his oath to obey the constitution 
and the laws. Slavery was a state institution, 
which he could not touch until all other measures 
for the restoration of the Union had failed. He 
believed that the paramount idea of the constitu- 
tion was the preservation in perpetuity of the gov- 
ernment which had been created by it. In this 
idea he found the mandate for his action. If any 
local institution should threaten the existence of 
the Union, it must be swept away. Like a surgeon 
confronted by a patient with a diseased limb he 
would endeavor to save both man and limb, but 
failing he would sacrifice the limb and save the 
life. "The moment came,' 7 said Mr. Lincoln, 
" when I felt that slavery must die that the nation 
might live." 

In the president's opinion this moment was at 
hand in July, 1862, and the emancipation procla- 
mation, as first submitted to the cabinet, stated his 
intention again to recommend compensated abolish- 
ment to the loyal slave states. This was a politic 
and conciliatory act. The right to slave property 
was to be recognized in states that were true to the 
Union ; in others the right would be extinguished 
upon the 1st of January, 1863. The paper was se- 
riously discussed by the president's ministers. 
Some feared that the step would have disastrous 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 283 

consequences, while others pressed for early action, 
believing that it had already been too Long delayed. 
Mr. Seward, since the Federal armies had lately 
suffered so many reverses, urged a postponement of 
the measure, lest it be regarded as " a last shriek on 
the retreat." l The force of this objection was <>t>- 
vious. Lincoln, therefore, bided his time until 
September, aiming meanwhile to bring about a 
change in the tide of affairs upon the field. ' ' He 
had promised his God that he would do it," if 
General Lee were driven back from Maryland, 2 and 
when McClellan halted the Confederate invasion at 
Antietam, the president called his cabinet together 
again, gave the document its final form, and fear- 
lessly issued it. " When Lee came over the river," 
Lincoln told George S. Boutwell, "I made a resolu- 
tion that if McClellan drove him back I would send 
the proclamation after him. The battle of An- 
tietam was fought Wednesday and until Saturday I 
could not find out whether we had gained a victory 
or not. It was then too late to issue the proclama- 
tion that day, and the fact is I fixed it up a little 
Sunday, and Monday I let them have it." s 

This homely description of the events leading up 
to the promulgation of one of the greatest of all 
American state documents, has in it more of truth 
than impressive dignity. On September 22d, as it 
happened, just one hundred days before the Xew 

1 Carpenter, " Six Months in the White House," p. 22. 

3 Ibid., p. 89. 

3 u Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. 126. 



284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Year day when the order would become effective, 
the proclamation was issued. Its most important 
clauses were as follows : 

" That on the first day of January in the year of 
our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
three, all persons held as slaves within any state or 
designated part of a state, the people whereof shall 
then be in rebellion against the United States shall 
be then, thenceforward and forever free ; and the 
executive government of the United States, includ- 
ing the military and naval authority thereof, will 
recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, 
and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, 
or any of them, in any efforts they may make for 
their actual freedom." 

Upon the 24th of September in reply to a sere- 
nade at the White House the president said : "I 
have not been distinctly informed why it is that on 
this occasion you appear to do me this honor, 
though I suppose it is because of the proclamation. 
What I did, I did after a very full deliberation, and 
under a very heavy and solemn sense of responsi- 
bility. I can only trust in God I have made no 
mistake." * He was not in the hero's mood. He 
was conscious that the moment was not one for self- 
congratulation. It was a stroke dealt at the rebel- 
lion, and for the time being, at least, must be re- 
garded only as the equivalent of a definite quantity 
of muskets or gunpowder. 

It proved to be, as Lincoln hoped, to quote Gen- 
1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 240. 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 

eral Grant, "the heaviest blow yet given the Con 
federacy." He did not mean to prosecute the war 
"with elder stalk squirts charged with rose water." 
"What I cannot do, of course I will not do,'" he 
wrote to Keverdy Johnson, "but it may as well be 
understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender 
this game, leaving any available card unplayed." 
On the 28th of September the president told Hanni- 
bal Hamlin that the North was responding to the 
proclamation "sufficiently in breath but breath 
kills no rebels." 

The measure was not without its anticipated un- 
happy influence in the autumn elections, but the 
president abated none of his determination to pur- 
sue the policy he had deliberately chosen, and on 
New Year's day the final order was given, declar- 
ing free, forever, the slaves in Arkansas, Texas, 
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South 
Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, barring cer- 
tain designated parishes nominally returned to the 
Union, and Virginia, with exceptions, for the forty - 
eight counties forming West Virginia and a few 
other districts, of which the Federals had rep»»- 
sessed themselves by their recent military cam 
paigns. The president declared that the military 
and naval power of the government would be em- 
ployed in enforcing the provisions of the proclama- 
tion, that negroes formerly enslaved would be 
received into the armed Federal service, while all 
were recommended to abstain from violence and 
secure work for wages wherever it could be found. 



286 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

"Upon this act," Mr. Lincoln concluded his 
famous order, "sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice warranted by the constitution upon military 
necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of 
mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 
Lincoln, while still not entirely convinced of the 
expediency of his course — for with him nothing was 
certain until after the experience — believed that his 
action was well timed. Six months earlier, he 
argued, the country would not have sustained the 
act. " We have seen this great revolution in pub- 
lic sentiment slowly but surely progressing," he 
observed, "so that when final action came, the 
opposition was not strong enough to defeat the 
purpose." To Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, 
in recalling the proclamation and the circumstances 
under which it was issued, the president said : 
"You see, Curtin, I was brought to the conclusion 
that there was no dodging this negro question any 
longer. We had reached the point where it seemed 
that we must avail ourselves of this element or in 
all probability go under." 

In justification of his course, Mr. Lincoln re- 
marked to Mr. Colfax : "The South had fair warn- 
ing that if they did not return to their duty, I 
should strike at the pillar of their strength. The 
promise must now be kept, and I shall never recall 
one word." 

The president had now done that which was 
calculated to reinstate him in the good opinion of 
his abolition friends, who were quite freely predict- 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 287 

ing that the war would end leaving slavery un- 
touched, the monstrous evil it had always been. 
Owen Lovejoy, himself not too patient under post 
ponements and delays, now found his prophecy 
fulfilled. "I tell you," he had said in the presi- 
dent's defense, "Mr. Lincoln is at heart as strong 
an anti-slavery man as any of them, but he is com- 
pelled to feel his way. He has a responsibility in 
this matter which many men do not seem able to 
comprehend. His mind acts slowly, but when he 
moves, it is forward. You will never find him 
receding from a position once taken." 

Meantime, to what extent and in what numbers 
the slaves should be emancipated in the Southern 
states, was a question, as Lincoln very well under- 
stood, depending upon the success of the Union 
arms. The problem for him to solve was this: 
Would emancipation promote or retard military 
operations directly upon Southern fields, or improve 
the situation by reflex influence upon public opin- 
ion in the North, whereby friendly majorities were 
secured in legislatures, armies were enlisted and 
sent to the front, and loans negotiated for meeting 
the enormous costs of war. Liberty in the South 
was contingent upon battles yet to be fought and 
won, and slaves in states undisputedly held by 
the Federals where they might have been emanci- 
pated were expressly excepted from the beneficent 
provisions of the order. Upon this ground the 
president's sincerity was openly questioned. The 
English people found proof in the act for their 



288 ABRAHAM LIKCOLK 

theory that the war was not a war of emancipation 
but a mere selfish contest for power. The London 
Times spoke of the proclamation as the ' ' execrable 
expedient of a servile insurrection." Mr. Lincoln, 
himself, was not unmindful of the fact that the 
task was yet but half done. " We are a good deal 
like whalers who have been long on the chase," he 
observed characteristically to a friend. " At last 
we have got our harpoon fairly into the monster; 
but we must look how we steer, or with one flop of 
his tail he will yet send us all into eternity." 

In his message to Congress in December, 1862, 
the president indulged in a lengthy, full and ear- 
nest discussion of his project for compensating slave 
masters, proposing a number of amendments to the 
constitution of the United States. His plans again 
called for the issue of bonds for long terms, payable 
in instalments to the states. The terminal period 
was now fixed at January 1, 1900. The president 
was at the same time striving to negotiate treaties 
with South American countries, in which he hoped to 
gain permission to establish colonies of Southern 
negroes. But they were not willing to receive such 
immigrants, and the colored people expressed no 
desire to go, whereupon Lincoln made a commend- 
able effort to show that deportation was not a neces- 
sary consequence of emancipation. He was under- 
going a development of mind upon this topic also. 
He had told a deputation of negroes in Washington 
in August, 1862 : " You and we are different races. 
We have between us a broader difference than exists 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAK 289 

between almost any other two races. Your race 
sutler very greatly, many of them by living among 
us, while ours suiter from your presence. 1 n a word 
we suffer on eaeh side. But for your race among 
us there could not be war, although many men en- 
gaged on either side do not care for you one way or 
the other. Nevertheless, I repeat without the m 
stitution of slavery, and the colored race as a basis, 
the war could not have an existence. It is better 
for us both therefore to be separated." ' In his 
message in the following December the president 
had changed his views to such an extent, that he 
found the objections urged against free negroes re- 
maining in the country to be u largely imaginary if 
not sometimes malicious." 

A few negroes who were sent to an island off the 
Haytian coast by way of experiment must be called 
for in a ship and brought home again in a very un- 
happy condition, and the idea of colonization as a 
philanthropic measure was rapidly losing its ad- 
herents. General B. F. Butler recommended thai 
the black soldiers, when the war had ended should 
be sent to Panama under his command, to dig an 
isthmian ship canal. u There is meat in that sug- 
gestion," remarked the president. " Go and see 
Seward." The Secretary of State also favored 
the expedition, but on the evening of the day the 
interview occurred, he was thrown from his car- 
riage and a little later Lincoln was assassinated.' 

1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 222. 

3 " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. 154. 



290 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

On the whole negro question, the most remark- 
able reversal of opinion was taking place in the 
public mind. Sudden transformations like these 
are explainable by nothing except the element of 
impulse in the American character. In the autumn 
elections after President Lincoln's preliminary 
proclamation, his enemies swept New York and 
other important states, and large numbers of 
men in the North would have seen him hanged with 
ill-concealed satisfaction. At no other time was 
the Union in so much peril, from Confederates in 
the South and their Copperhead allies in the North, 
one vying with the other in the effort to make 
the president's task impossible. The change of 
sentiment, when it came, was due to no influence 
so much as the success of the Federal arms begin- 
ning with Grant's capture of Vicksburg and 
Meade's victory at Gettysburg. Up to this 
point the South believed itself invincible, and 
Europe shared its view. The London Times 
declared that the ' ' attempt of the North to re- 
store the Union is as hopeless, as would be the 
attempt here to restore the Heptarchy," and 
throughout the year 1863 the president did not 
know what would be the eventual verdict on his 
negro policy. So soon as the great " anaconda 
scheme" began its slow but effectual work of 
strangulation, the Confederates being pressed into 
ever narrowing confines, great outlying districts in 
the West being totally cleared of their troops, and 
the Mississippi opened to navigation from the Ohio 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 291 

to the sea, the morals of the people underwent a 
wholesome revolution. Fighting with negroes, 
even fighting for negroes was no longer the bug- 
bear it had formerly been. Men, who in each com 
munity, cursed and reviled the Abolitionists and 
informed against the station-keepers upon the Un- 
derground Railroad in an effort to enforce the hard 
provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law, were now 
Abolitionists themselves. Slaveholders in the 
South were advocates of emancipation. Those who 
two or three years before would have cheerfully as- 
sisted at the funerals of William Lloyd Garrison 
and Wendell Phillips, were coming into perfect 
sympathy with them, looking upon slavery as the 
abomination it ever was and always will be, and 
eager enough to forget that any other view of the 
subject had ever been entertained. 

In the states which were coming into control of 
the Federals, the president was face to face with the 
problems of reconstruction, and new governments 
were being formed by the military agents sent out 
from Washington, the soldiers on the ground, re- 
pen tants, imported traders, settlers and adventur- 
ers, and all loyal elements which could be utilized 
for the work. It is easy to understand why legisla- 
tures organized and controlled by a conquering 
army would emancipate, if that were the command 
from Washington, but military influence does not 
explain the revolution of sentiment in Maryland 
and other border states, which were amending their 
constitutions and making negroes free. To these 



292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

states Mr. Lincoln was still holding out promises of 
compensation, and had made a suggestion which 
was disapproved by his cabinet for the payment of 
fonr hundred million dollars to all the slave states 
if they would return to their duty in the Union. ' 
Fifteen millions had been named in Congress as a 
sum in consolation money for the slaveholders of 
Missouri, but the institution was in the way of 
being swept out of existence on a cheaper plan. 
The Senate in April, 1864, passed, by the necessary 
two-thirds majority, a resolution submitting to the 
states the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, forever prohibiting slavery 
on American soil. In June, when it reached a vote 
in the House of Representatives, although ninety- 
three members voted affirmatively and but sixty- 
five in a negative sense, the requisite number lacked 
and the question remained under discussion in the 
country at large until the next session. Then in the 
same Congress the subject was reconsidered. Many 
Democrats, in view of the result of the presidential 
election in November, 1864, were willing to change 
their votes, and on January 31, 1865, the amend- 
ment was adopted amid applause, cheers, the wav- 
ing of handkerchiefs and other demonstrations of 
enthusiasm which were continued for several min- 
utes both on the floor and in the galleries. There- 
upon the House adjourned "in honor of this im- 
mortal and sublime event, " guns were fired from 
the batteries guarding the city, and the president, 
1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 636. 



THE SLAVE IN THE WAR 293 

so often "serenaded," was again called to the win 
dow at the White House for a speech to a jubilant 
crowd. To his proclamation it might be objected 
that it was unconstitutional, and that it was pari Lai 
in its operation. "But this amendment," he ob- 
served, "is a king's cure-all for all the evils. It 
winds the whole thing up." 

Illinois, the president's own state at once, the next 
day, February 1st, ratified the amendment. Khode 
Island and Michigan followed on the 2d ; Mary- 
land, New York and West Virginia on the 3d, and 
before the month ended seventeen states had voted 
for emancipation. It was not until December 18, 
1865, eight months after Lincoln's death, however, 
that three-fourths of the states, the constitutional 
number, several of them being the reconstructed 
Southern governments, signified their approval. 

Nothing so well measures the length of the swing 
of the pendulum of public opinion on the negro 
question in these four eventful years, as a reference 
to the bare text of the amendment, which was sub- 
mitted to the states by Congress, and recommended 
for adoption by President Lincoln in 1861, and the 
Thirteenth Amendment of 1865. In 1861 it was 
proposed that the constitution should be amended 
as follows : "No amendment shall be made to the 
constitution, which will authorize or give to Con- 
gress the power to abolish or interfere within any 
state with the domestic institutions thereof, includ- 
ing that of persons held to labor or service by the 
laws of said state." 



294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

In 1865 the following amendment was adopted : 
" Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except 
as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall 
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the 
United States, or any place subject to their juris 
diction." 



/ 



CHAPTER XI 

LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 

Those who knew Lincoln most intimately, are a 
unit in declaring that he was a master in the art of 
politics. A consummate politician, far-seeing, 
shrewd and tactful, no picture of him will ever be 
complete if it omit this important element in the 
composition. Regarded by some as guileless and 
unsophisticated, none lived who did not repent of 
that judgment. While his rise is often considered 
to be an accident, the fact that he was at all times 
the man of the hour, ready at every opportunity to 
move forward into his assigned place, is something 
apart from chance. Those who thought him ig- 
norant, were disabused of that idea when they ob- 
served the mastery that he gained of whatever sub- 
ject claimed his intellectual attentions. Those who 
criticised him for vulgarity, might in the next 
moment be called upon to admire the elevated 
poetry of his thought. If any conceived that he 
was weak, and that he was dominated at Washing- 
ton by his secretary of state's superior mind, an 
impression which at first prevailed in England, the 
South and some parts of the North where the Sew- 
ard legend died only fitfully, the impression was 



296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

corrected by observation, and is scorned by the his- 
torian. 

A character, incomprehensible for its contrasts to 
many, even among those that knew it best, Lincoln 
will always be acquitted of any lack of knowledge 
and understanding of human nature. He had come 
up from the people, appreciated their views and 
aspirations, and could bear with them in all their 
moods. His aptitude in translating their present 
opinions and in predicting what these would be in 
some future year, was greater doubtless than that 
possessed by any other American statesman. He 
never could have committed that gross error 
ascribed to a monarch in Europe who, sniffing the 
air, in a crowd, exclaimed, "How the people 
smell ! " He assumed an attitude of superiority in 
reference to no American citizen, despite the com- 
plaints of many that he was a despot, denied him- 
self to no visitor, no matter how humble, refused to 
forget his origins, and but a short while before his 
death, at a hospital camp near Washington, made 
fly the chips from a log to recall his youth, and 
afterward helved the axe, that is, held it out in his 
right arm horizontally, a feat that none of his com- 
panions was able to perform. Nevertheless, it was 
upon no appeal to his beginnings that he relied for 
popular support, the studied manner of some 
American politicians who are " self-made," and of 
whom it has always been a temptation to inquire 
why, when they were making themselves, the work 
had not been done more cleverly. However much 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 297 

his friends sought aid for him in fence rails and log 
cabins, he never committed the mistake of asking 
for votes of poor and ignorant men because he had 
once been poor and ignorant. He knew the worth 
of education and the established agencies through 
which it might be obtained, and without too much 
faith in the laws of chance, sent his son to one of 
the best secondary classical schools in New England, 
whence he made his way to Harvard College. 

Lincoln entered practical politics, in a practical 
country, in a practical age, in his early years. 
Schooled to the methods most effective in conduct- 
ing popular campaigns, procuring votes and electing 
candidates for nearly thirty years in Illinois, some 
of his acumen still served him in good stead as the 
president of the United States. It is difficult to know 
whether most to admire the careful regard which he 
had for the claims of various geographical sections 
and various factions of opinion in constructing his 
cabinet, or the consummate ability with which he 
managed and conciliated its diverse elements after 
ward. He publicly declared that he would not be 
bound by any arrangements made at Chicago with 
the managers of rival candidates, and yet every 
important name brought before the convention was 
tactfully admitted to the list of his ministers. 
Eepublican leaders who had contributed to his 
nomination and election, never had occasion to 
complain of his ingratitude, and those who could 
not be placed at home were sent abroad to preside 
over the American legations and consulates. His 



298 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

motto, " justice to all," if we except a few cases like 
that of Mr. Stanton in offices in which present 
efficiency must be the sole test at the expense of 
past services, was meant to apply principally to 
Eepublicans, and when circumstances permitted to 
his own unwavering friends. His election was the 
means of elevating to public position a number of 
Illinois politicians, whose fame could not have 
spread outside the locality in which they were bred, 
but for his fortunate accession to power, whereby 
they were put into places which in the case of 
Seward's victory would have been filled by Thurlow 
Weed. Mr. Lincoln's skill in treating with the 
New York state leader, and in retaining his friend- 
ship, is but another proof of his masterly com- 
prehension of the rules of practical politics. He 
directed there, as everywhere, without making to 
be felt the iron inside his gloved hand. Always the 
master, he treated none as a servant, and won his 
victories by methods that are worthy of the respect 
and emulation of all statesmen in democracies. 

Again and again, after he was ensconced in the 
presidency, the California politicians protested 
because he preferred over their own the recom- 
mendations for office coming through Edward D. 
Baker, nominally a senator from Oregon. Lincoln 
replied simply that Baker was his friend, a personal 
obligation of that kind being stronger than any 
other consideration. He knew his friends, and was 
inclined to give them all their appropriate rewards. 
He was not of those who could feel great sympathy 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 299 

for a civil service based upon any system <>| 
examinations, or the tedious and inanimate proc 
esses by which men come to their offices through 
bureaucratic service. "I personally wish Jacob 
Freese, of New Jersey, to be appointed colonel for 
a colored regiment," he wrote to Secretary Stanton 
in November, 18G3 ; " and this regardless of whether 
he can tell the exact shade of Julius Caesar's hair." 
Through the personal influence of Mr. Seward, the 
nation had very fortunately secured Charles Francis 
Adams as its representative in England, but most 
of the posts abroad were, after the manner of the 
time, bestowed as rewards for political service 
A few crumbs fell into other laps. " I have sunn 
wish that Thomas D. Jones, of Cincinnati, and 
John J. Piatt, now in this city," Lincoln wrote to 
Secretary Seward in March, 1865, but a few weeks 
before his assassination, " should have some of 
those moderate sized consulates which facilitate 
artists a little in their profession. Please watch for 
chances." 

That very many civilian appointments in the 
army were most unsuitable, and that disgraceful 
scandals arose in the conduct of the war on its 
business side, is due less to partisan favoritism than 
to the total lack of a military system. An effort to 
create one could not be successful in a short time, 
especially under the pressure and disadvantage of a 
contest constantly increasing in its dimensions. The 
president could not, or at any rate sincerely believed 
that he could not, solely consider the best interests 



300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of the service in the management of the war, bringiDg 
to his work, especially in the early stages of the con- 
test, the manner of the politician rather than of the 
wise, strong, military leader. He tolerated useless 
and unsuccessful commanders for expediency's sake 
long after they should have been dismissed, and had 
regard — no one will say that he could have suc- 
ceeded better if at all by adopting another policy — 
for the effect of each movement upon public opinion. 
Wheedling, coaxing, advising when the efficiency of 
the service abstractly considered required immediate 
supersession, precious time was consumed, and for 
this waste there was no compensation except that 
the people were being educated, and their rulers 
were gaining in experience. 

Not a vote was cast in any local election in a 
Northern or a border state that was without mean- 
ing to the president, and that did not bring a com- 
mand to him to proceed more rapidly or more 
cautiously, or perhaps to stand still marking time 
until the millions should come into accord with 
each other and with him, and permit of another 
forward movement. 

Lincoln had the rare faculty of being able to im- 
press those with whom he came in contact with the 
fact that he was the living embodiment of their 
thoughts, feelings, opinions and aspirations. They 
went from his presence convinced that he was with 
them and of them, a trait most valuable to a 
popular leader, and in him ripely perfected. He 
lacked in dignity and breeding for men who valued 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 301 



those qualities. He attained objects by tedious 
methods, and waited too long to satisfy eager peo 
pie. He told anecdotes to evade issues, cherished 
intentions that he did not publish, and tempered 
his speeches for those to whom they were addressed. 
But with all these characteristics, which will pass 
for political tact, there was a conviction of great 
honesty and marvelous benevolence in forming 
judgments of other men's actions. The president's 
sympathy was felt, if it were not openly expressed, 
and a conviction developed that he was doing for 
the nation the best that circumstances would allow. 

Something of the politician's manner is exhibited 
in Mr. Lincoln's utterances to representatives of 
religious bodies. That he was not a professing 
religious man and reserved to himself the right of 
criticising clergymen who voted against him in 
Springfield, bishops who became Confederate gen- 
erals, and Southern churchmen who supported 
slavery, would seem to make even less fitting the 
freedom with which he sometimes employed the 
name of the Deity. To Mrs. Gurney, representing 
the Society of Friends, Lincoln had described him- 
self with considerable arrogation as "a humble 
instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Fa- 
ther." l 

His public documents are pervaded witli refer- 
ences to the Divine care exercised over the destinies 
of governments, in most respects reverent and ac- 
ceptable. They at the same time suggest an i \ 
1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 243. 



302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cessive regard for the supposed feelings of those 
whom he addressed. It was his task, as he said, to 
put himself and the government "on the Lord's 
side," and judged by many declarations Mr. Lin- 
coln's religion must be accounted a search for a 
powerful ally, whose favors it was hoped he might 
keep from falling to the other side, rather than a 
natural, deep-felt serious thing. The God who 
favored but one side in such a contest, and allowed 
terrible wars to continue year after year, as the 
president himself characteristically observed in 
uncertain moments, was a somewhat inexplicable 
being. He was obliged often to doubt the ex- 
istence of a living, intervening Heavenly Power. 
"You say your husband is a religious man," he said 
in one of his less reverent moods in response to a 
Tennessee woman's appeal for the release of a 
prisoner of war. "Tell him when you meet him 
that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, 
but that in my opinion the religion which sets men 
to rebel and fight against their government because 
as they think that government does not sufficiently 
help some men to eat their bread in the sweat of 
other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon 
which people can get to heaven." 

The politician is seen, in the president's reply to 
the committee of Chicago clergymen on September 
13, 1862. He observed that for a long time he had 
been visited by religious men of the most opposite 
views, all equally certain that they represented the 
Divine will. " I hope it will not be irreverent for 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 303 

nie to say," Mr. Lincoln remarked to the depute 
tion, "that if it is probable that God would reveal 
His will to others on a point so connected with my 
duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it 
directly to me; for unless I am more deceived in 
myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to 
know the will of Providence in this matter. And 
if I can learn what it is, I will do it. These are 
not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose 
it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct 
revelation. I must study the plain physical facts 
of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn 
what appears to be wise and right." Coming as it 
did only nine days before the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation was issued, it must be adjudged to have 
been a needlessly harsh and evasive utterance to a 
group of good men, meant to serve a political pur- 
pose, — clearly to create the impression that what 
he was about to do would not be done in answer to 
the prayers of the clergy and the Abolitionists. 

It was the politician's skill which led Mr. Lin- 
coln to appreciate the fact that he must make him- 
self and his party practically coextensive with 
loyal Union sentiment in all parts of the country. 
When General Butler received his commission, he 
said that he did not know whether the president 
would trust him to a command. He had been the 
Breckinridge candidate for governor in Massachu- 
setts. " All the better," Lincoln is reported to 
have said. " I hope your example will bring many 
of the same sort with you." 



304 ABBAHAM LINCOLN 

"But I do not know," replied Butler, "that I 
can support the measures of your administration, 
Mr. President." 

"I do not care whether you do or not, if you 
will fight for the country," was Lincoln's reply. 

His relations with the leaders of the party which 
had opposed his election, showed the most astute 
appreciation of the need of giving offense nowhere, 
and of arming that great body of men without 
whose aid the Union could not have been preserved. 
They proved themselves a dangerous force in unset- 
tling the arrangements for the conduct of the war 
in 1862, and their attitude was still the subject of 
much solicitude in 1863 and 1864. Mr. Lincoln 
had reason to be glad of the opportunity to appoint 
loyal Democrats to prominent places in the army, 
as it reflected good upon the entire service, in cities 
and villages where new men were being drafted as 
well as on fields where seasoned soldiers were fight- 
ing the nation's battles. In not a few instances 
such appointments were made and such comman- 
ders were retained to the disadvantage of the serv- 
ice, especially in the first stages of the war. It 
was in fear of the charge of partisanship that Mc- 
Clellan was not removed, at a time when he 
abundantly deserved it, to serve, as it was foreseen 
that he would, as a leader about whom disaffected 
men might rally to embarrass the administration. 
Mr. Lincoln always knew those who were his 
friends, cm fond, and they had a place very close to 
his heart. He suffered others to serve him and 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 305 

serve him ill for political reasons, but if their Loj 
alty was uot made manifest, the relation did not 
continue longer than necessity required. He learned, 
as the war progressed, what he knew imperfectly 
when it began, that in military management, friend- 
ship, either personal or political, could have no 
proper place. Only loyalty to the Union and skill 
in winning battles counted for anything it was 
worth while to take into consideration in the direc- 
tion of great bodies of soldiers on the battle Held, a 
lesson which, when it was learned, brought Grant, 
Sherman and Sheridan together in their triumphant 
combinations. 

Politics, the particular bane of all wars in de- 
mocracies, especially of civil wars, had wrought to 
complicate purely military problems at every point. 
It was Lincoln, to use one of his own homely 
phrases, who applied the hair of the dog to cure its 
bite. By politics he met and coped with politics, 
and thus counteracted and averted much, that 
under less knowing and skilful management, would 
have brought the country vastly greater disasters 
than those gigantic, as they were, by which it was 
oppressed. In the spring of 1864 he gave to one of 
his trusted agents an evidence of his superb mastery 
of political tactics. The incident did not strangely 
impress his friends to whom his methods were so 
frequently revealed. It was not yet certain to what 
extent the reconstructed Southern governments could 
be utilized in making up the total of states neces- 
sary for the adoption of the Thirteenth Amend- 



306 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

merit. Lincoln was anxious to have Nevada ad- 
mitted to the Union, although its title to statehood 
is to-day still unclear, and by a little character- 
istic manipulation, he accomplished his object. 
Some objections were urged in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, but they did not seem to the president 
to be insuperable. "It is easier to admit Nevada 
than raise another million soldiers, 77 said he, and 
entering the office of Charles A. Dana, assistant 
Secretary of War, Lincoln exhibited his familiarity 
with the situation by canvassing practically the 
entire house, stating how each member would vote 
upon the statehood question. There were three, he 
said, two from New York and one from New Jersey 
whom he wished Dana to "deal with." Dana 
asked what the men would be likely "to want.' 7 
" I don't know, 77 the president replied. " It makes 
no difference, though, what they want. It is a 
question of three votes or new armies. 77 Whatever 
promise his agent should make Lincoln promised to 
fulfil. 

Two of the congressmen, it was discovered, 
would make internal revenue collectorships the 
price of their adhesion to the measure ; the third 
desired an appointment for a friend in connection 
with the New York custom-house, which yielded 
the incumbent perhaps $30,000 a year. Dana suc- 
cessfully managed the transaction, and thus it was 
that three votes were secured for the admission of 
Nevada, so that the state in the next February 
could be added to the number ratifying the amend- 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 30? 



merit by which slavery was forever abolished on 
American soil. The custom-house appointmenl 
was not made because Mr. Lincoln's death inter- 
vened, and President Johnson refused to be bound 
by the arrangement on the ground that " such bar- 
gains tend to immorality." l Nevertheless it was a 
method that Lincoln did not scruple to employ 
when it would help him gain a desired result. 

In 1864 the president and his friends were by no 
means certain of his reelection. A great deal of 
diplomacy, and all the power and influence of 
the War Department were called into requisition 
to accomplish an object which it is no exaggeration 
to say had as much to do with the complete extir- 
pation of slavery and the unconditional return of 
the seceded states as General Grant's operations on 
the battle-field. Lincoln frequently said that he 
would retire from his office in favor of any man 
who could better do the work which the nation had 
in hand. For a time the Secretary of the Treasnn , 
Mr. Chase, seems to have thought that he was or- 
dained to play this part, and an admirer, Senator 
Pomeroy of Kansas, issued a circular recommend- 
ing his candidacy. It was widely distributed, but 
elicited practically no favorable response from any 
quarter, and the possibility of opposition within 
the president's own party was early dismissed :is 
entirely chimerical. Chase, who had many ideas of 
his own in reference to slavery, which were fre- 
quently urged without making too deep an im- 
1 Dana, " Recollections of the Civil War," p. 177. 



308 ABRAHAM LIKCOLK 

pression upon Mr. Lincoln's mind, seems now to 
have thought that the country would benefit by 
drawing unreservedly upon his fund of wisdom, 
and he encouraged the movement to bring him for- 
ward as a rival for the presidential nomination, 
until long after all but he were well convinced that 
the candidate of the Union party would be the man 
under whom so much that was wholesome and ef- 
fectual had already been accomplished at Wash- 
ington. 

Singularly enough, the only real opposition to 
Mr. Lincoln's reelection, in circles in which men's 
loyalty was beyond dispute, came from the anti- 
slavery element, early clamorous for radical action, 
and still impatient at the progress making at Wash- 
ington for the liberation, the enfranchisement and 
the full recognition of the negro as the equal of his 
white brother. They passed the bounds of reason 
in their unpractical philanthropy, and held a con- 
vention at Cleveland, O., on the last day of May, 
1864, to nominate a candidate for the presidency. 
The choice fell upon John C. Fremont who had the 
sympathy of many of the intemperate, because of 
his bold and mistaken course in emancipating 
slaves by military decree in Missouri, his enforced 
retirement from military service because of his 
costly errors of judgment as a commander, and his 
frequent semi-political appeals to the public, whose 
confidence he had enjoyed as the first presidential 
standard-bearer of the Republican party. General 
Fremont accepted the nomination from the hands 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 309 



of men who denounced "the imbecile and vacillat 
ing policy " of the administration. He himself de 
clared that " it would be fatal to endorse a policy 
and renew a power which has cost us the lives of 
thousands of men, and needlessly put the country 
on the road to bankruptcy. 7 ' 

A few voices were raised in behalf of Genera] 
Grant's nomination for the presidency, but thai 
commander, after his wonted manner, gave his un- 
divided attention to the problem in hand in Vir- 
ginia, holding himself in an exemplary and soldier- 
like way, wholly aloof from questions of politics. 

" There is but one contingency that can cause 
your defeat for a second term," one of Mr. Lin- 
coln's friends remarked in 1863, "and that is 
Grant's capture of Eichmond and his nomination as 
an opposition candidate." 

"Well," replied the president shrewdly, "I feel 
very much about that as the man felt who said he 
didn't want to die particularly, but if he had got to 
die, that was precisely the disease he would like to 
die of." 

Meanwhile Mr. Lincoln's friends, dismissing these 
marks of hostility to his candidacy for a second 
term as the small absurdities that are characteristic 
of all popular electoral campaigns, were laying 
their plans for his renomination at the national 
convention called to meet early in June in Balti- 
more. It was a movement which, so far as he was 
concerned, needed no direction. It was hearty, 
spontaneous and unanimous. No other candidate 



310 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was seriously regarded and the delegates entered the 
convention from their states pledged unquestioningly 
to Lincoln for a second term. Efforts were honestly 
made through Thurlow Weed and others to concili- 
ate McClellan and Governor Seymour of New York, 
that their influence might be enlisted upon the 
Union side, but in those quarters the advances of 
the administration were rejected. Overtures were 
made to General Butler, in the hope that he might 
consent to become the candidate for vice-president 
on the Union ticket, in the appeal for the support 
of the War Democrats. That so observant a poli- 
tician as Mr. Lincoln should have regarded Butler 
as a suitable man with whom to make the running, 
may be seriously doubted, but the canny and self- 
conscious general had the pleasure of declining, if 
we shall admit the right of the delegate to proffer 
him the important honor. 

"Tell Mr. Lincoln," General Butler remarked to 
the emissary, who was no other than Simon Cam- 
eron, ' i l with the prospects of the campaign I would 
not quit the field to be vice-president, even with 
himself as president, unless he will give me bond 
with sureties in the full sum of his four years' 
salary, that he will die or resign within three 
months after his inauguration. Ask him what he 
thinks I have done to deserve the punishment, at 
forty-six years of age, of being made to sit as pre- 
siding officer over the Senate to listen for four years 
to debates, more or less stupid, in which I can take 
1 McClure, "LincolD and Men of War Times," p. 106. 



LINCOLN, THE POL I T I ( ! I A X ; ; | i 

no part, nor say a word, nor even be allowed a vote 
upon any subject which concerns the welfare of the 
country." l 

The convention found in Andrew Johnson of 
Tennessee, whose loyalty to the Union seemed to be 
well established by recent important services, a 
Southern slaveholder, whose past affiliations and 
present situation, geographically, promised to ap- 
peal forcibly to the sympathy of political elements 
it was desirable to conciliate, a man they were will- 
ing to entrust with the second place upon the 
ticket, though the decision was one that his spon- 
sors long and grievously repented, in view of the 
comparative ease with which the contest was won 
and his singular recalcitrancy when, by the chance 
of crime, he succeeded to an office it was never 
meant that he should occupy. 

It was at the time, however, by no means certain 
that Mr. Lincoln could be reelected, and the situ- 
ation wore a particularly ominous aspect as Grant 
slaughtered his men in vain engagements, and Early, 
unhindered, raided Pennsylvania and Maryland, 
and threatened Washington itself in a summer 
which had little in it to presage the speedy termi- 
nation of the war. The Copperheads and Peace 
Democrats, reinforced by those well-meaning peo- 
ple, of large though uncertain number, who were 
sick at heart because of the ruthless and, as it 
seemed, unending destruction of human life, bade 
fair to become a powerful force. As yet no uomi- 
1 " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. 158. 



312 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nation had been made, although General McClellan 
was looked to as the natural leader of these dis- 
affected factions. The convention, first called for 
July 4th, was postponed until late in August. 
"At this period we had no adversary," said Mr. 
Lincoln, " and seemed to have no friends." On all 
sides there were demands for the appointment of 
commissioners to negotiate for peace with the South 
upon any procurable terms. Thurlow Weed who 
was no novice in the study of popular moods and 
temperaments, told Lincoln and Seward in August, 
that the administration had "not the slightest hope 
of success." In the last days of the month the 
Democratic national convention met at Chicago and, 
while the delegates were in a state of mental con- 
fusion in regard to most questions, they were toler- 
ably well agreed as to the sentiments to be enter- 
tained of Lincoln personally. It is a rule in Amer- 
ican politics, long remarked in Europe, that you 
should ' ' never accuse your adversary of ignorance 
or error ; declare boldly that he murdered his 
grandmother or stole clocks." Lincoln understood 
the American manner, and always took what was 
said about him at its true worth, as most of our 
statesmen are able to do when they are gifted even 
in a small way with that precious quality, a sense 
of humor. The president was favored in that re- 
spect to a remarkable degree, and added to this 
trait was patience to wait until other men discov- 
ered their mistakes, and overflowing charity. 
One delegate at Chicago declared that ' ' for less 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN 313 

offenses than Mr. Lincoln had been guilty of, the 
English people had chopped off the head of the 
first Charles." Another arose and asserted that 
u ever since that usurper, traitor and tyrant had oc 
cupied the presidential chair, the party had shouted 
war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. Blood 
had flowed in torrents and yet the thirst of tin- 
old monster was not quenched. His cry was for 
more blood.' 7 ' 

A platform contrived by the notorious Copper 
head, Vallandigham, which the convention's nomi 
nee was compelled to repudiate, declaring that the 
war had been a failure, and demanding that hostili- 
ties should at once cease, gave a feeling of re- 
turning confidence to the friends of the adminisl ra- 
tion. Fremont's candidacy never attained a dignity 
that would allow it to be seriously considered, least 
of all by President Lincoln who, in the presence of a 
caller, turned to a Bible, and opening the book 
dryly read a verse from First Samuel: "And 
every one that was in distress and every one t lint 
was in debt, and every one that was discontent ed, 
gathered themselves unto him and he became a 
captain over them : and there were with him about 
four hundred men." In September, Fremont for- 
mally retired from the race, while McClellan's pre- 
tensions were disposed of effectually by the 
Vallandigham platform, and the movements of 
Grant and Sherman who were changing Federal 

1 From reports of the convention in a Chicago Democratic- 
newspaper. 



314 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

fortunes and making the fact very obvious that the 
war was in no sense a failure. 

Nevertheless nothing could be taken for granted, 
and no power at hand which could contribute to 
make the result more certain, was left unexercised. 
Battles were fought and demonstrations were 
planned in the field with a view to influencing public 
sentiment favorably. On September 19th, Lincoln 
wrote to General Sherman, urging that soldiers be 
sent home to vote in Indiana, one of the October 
states where it was desired that the Union majority 
should be large. l l Giving the state government to 
those who will oppose the war in every possible 
way, is too much risk if it can be avoided," said 
the president. ' ' This is in no sense an order, but 
is merely intended to impress you with the impor- 
tance to the army itself of doing all you safely can, 
yourself being the judge of what you can safely 
do." 

There was fear lest McClellan should prove to be 
a dangerous candidate in Pennsylvania, his native 
state, and at that time a factor of some uncertainty. 
A Republican politician went to Lincoln in Wash- 
ington to say that if 15,000 or more Pennsylvania 
soldiers were granted furloughs and would come 
home to vote in their uniforms at their separate 
polling places, it would be an important influence to 
create enthusiasm for the Union. It was suggested 
that he should ask Grant to do this for him, but 
Mr. Lincoln said that he did not know whether the 
general-in-chief would be his friend in such a mat- 



LINCOLN, THE POUT KM AN 31 :» 



ter. Then it was urged that lie might ask Meade <>r 
Sheridan. "Oh," said Lincoln as his face sud 
denly lighted up with a smile, "] can tnisl Phil. 
He's all right." ' Thus it was that several 1 housand 
Pennsylvanians left their commands and returned 
to their homes, to become an important influence in 
carrying their state for the Union candidates. 

Nowhere, at no time, did Mr. Lincoln commit 
the mistake of entering the canvass in person, even 
by offering publicly to discuss political questions. 
He stated nothing in regard to his future aims, and 
explained or apologized for no act of the past. His 
reelection would be an endorsement of the efforts he 
had made to preserve the Union, and a command 
to continue on his course. He was not uncertain as 
to what he would do if McClellan were the popular 
choice. He would go to the president-elect, offer 
ing to cooperate with him in an effort to save the 
Union before inauguration day. That would have 
been the government's only chance of salvation, 
Mr. Lincoln observed, for his successor, whoever 
he might be, would have secured the election on 
such terms that it could not possibly be saved after- 
ward. 3 "The general would have answered you, 
'yes, yes, 7 " Seward interposed, " and the next day 
when you saw him again and pressed your views 
upon him he would have said 'yes, yes,' and so on 
forever, and would have done nothing at all." 



1 " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. xlii ; also Mo- 
Clure, " Lincoln and Men of War Times," p. 188. 

2 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 568. 



316 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

But McClellan was not elected. In November, 
not a free state gave him a majority except New 
Jersey which, with Delaware and Kentucky, 
yielded the Democratic candidate a total of twenty - 
one electoral votes, 212 having been cast for Lincoln 
and Johnson. As a clergyman had observed upon 
a lighted transparency which hung over his door 
in Middletown, Conn., the night following the 
election, i i And the angel of the Lord called unto 
Abraham out of heaven the second time." J Lin- 
coln knew the result several weeks before the returns 
reached him from the telegraph instruments in the 
War Department, although there were many doubt- 
ful days during the summer. He was too astute 
an observer not to read the signs of the time. The 
man who had offered to bear the traveling expenses 
of a friendly Kansas delegate to the Chicago con- 
vention in 1860 ; who put Cameron in the war 
office, sending him afterward to Russia ; who made 
Judd minister to Prussia ; who bore long and 
patiently with McClellan until that general was 
condemned by his own devoted troops, and the 
president was himself more firmly entrenched in 
their affections than the " Young Napoleon" 
had ever been ; who asked commanders to detach 
soldiers in order to carry important elections ; who, 
for votes in Congress, bartered internal revenue 
collectorships and custom-house appointments must 
be held to have been a politician of the first rank. 
He employed his powers benevolently for great and 
1 Genesis 22 : 15. 



LINCOLN, THE POLITICIAN :i, 

useful ends, but lie possessed the same sk ill which, 
when it is put to vulgar uses, develops one of the 
principal evils of American public life. II<- wa 
"supreme politician," said Charles a Dana; In- 
was a " master politician" said A. K. McClure, 
two men not ignorant or unappreciative of the poli- 
tician as lie manifests himself in the United Stales, 
and to whom Lincoln revealed these rather on- 
heroic phases of his character. 



CHAPTER XII 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 



The most striking personal trait, that char- 
acteristic in Mr. Lincoln which impressed the 
casual observer most forcibly, was his grotesque 
appearance. To those who came to know him 
closely, and saw through the surfaces, his awk- 
wardness of manner and the extreme homeliness of 
his face were forgotten, the universal experience 
with reference to one's unhandsome friends. "I 
knew it was all a Copperhead lie," said a woman 
who came from the executive mansion with her 
congressman, after having received a favor at the 
hands of the president. " Knew what was a Cop- 
perhead lie?" asked her companion. " That Mr. 
Lincoln was an ugly man. He is the handsomest 
man I ever saw." 

Nevertheless, from boyhood, Lincoln had never 
enjoyed a reputation for beauty, and he was the 
last to plume himself upon grace of bearing or 
physiognomy, or the gentlemanliness of his be- 
havior, understanding quite clearly that in all 
these things he was a law unto himself. Mr. 
Edward Dicey was but one of the foreign ob- 
servers who came to Washington during the war, 
but his description will serve to express the gen- 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 319 

oral opinion, and differs from the rest only in 
vividness of detail. "When yon have called the 
president 'honest Abe Lincoln,' according t<> the 
favorite phrase of the American press," Mr. Dicej 
remarked, "you have said a great deal, doubtless, 
but you have also said all that can be said in his 
favor. He works hard and does little ; and unites 
a painful sense of responsibility to a still more pain- 
ful sense, perhaps, that his work is too gnat for 
him to grapple with. Personally his aspect is one 
which, once seen, cannot easily be forgotten. If 
you take the stock English caricature of the typical 
Yankee, you have the likeness of the president. 
To say that he is ugly is nothing ; to add that his 
figure is grotesque is to convey no adequate ex 
pression. Fancy a man six foot high and thin out 
of proportion, with long, bony arms and legs, 
which somehow seem to be always in the way, with 
large, rugged hands, which grasp you like a vise 
when shaking yours, with a long, scraggy neck 
and a chest too narrow for the great arms hanging 
by its side. Add to this figure a head cocoanut- 
shaped and somewhat too small for such a stature, 
covered with rough, uncombed and uncombable 
lank dark hair, that stands out in every direction 
at once; a face furrowed, wrinkled and indented 
as though it had been scarred by vitriol ; a high, 
narrow forehead and, sunk deep beneath bushy 
eyebrows, two bright, somewhat dreamy eyes, that 
seemed to gaze through you without looking at 
you ; a few irregular blotches of black, bristly hair 



320 ABBAHAM LINCOLN 

in the place where beard and whiskers ought to 
grow ; a close-set, thin-lipped, stern mouth, with 
two rows of large, white teeth and a nose and ears 
which have been taken by mistake from a head of 
twice the size. Clothe this figure then in a long, 
tight, badly-fitting suit of black, creased, soiled 
and puckered up at every salient point of the 
figure — and every point of this figure is salient — 
put on large, ill-fitting boots, gloves too long for the 
long bony fingers and a fluffy hat covered to the 
top with dusty puffy crape ; and then add to all 
this an air of strength, physical as well as moral, 
a strange look of dignity coupled with all this 
grotesqueness, and you will have the impression 
left upon me by Abraham Lincoln. " 

All his life morbidly sad and boisterously jovial 
by sudden turns, these characteristics were still 
marked at Washington. Upon no nature could 
the responsibilities of the war have made a deeper 
or more sorrowful impression than upon the presi- 
dent's, and every estimate of the time which raises 
a doubt as to the profundity of his sympathy for 
each wounded soldier and stricken family of the 
slain during four bitter years of war is based upon 
imperfect knowledge. At some critical periods he 
was practically inconsolable in his grief. He did 
not sleep. He haunted the corridors of the White 
House in a long dressing gown, his head bowed, 
speaking often to himself in tones of hopeless sad- 
ness. F. B. Carpenter, who lived for several 
months in the executive mansion, while painting 






LINCOLN, THE MAN 321 

his emancipation picture, described Lincoln's as 
the saddest face he ever knew. While the battles 
of the Wilderness were being fought "there were 
days," he said, "when I could scarcely look into it 
without crying." At the death of his friends he 
was almost beside himself witli grief. He heard of 
Senator Baker's death at Ball's Bluff in October, 

1861, while standing over a telegraph instrument 
with General McOlellan. Without a word he 
passed out into the street, the tears rolling down his 
furrowed cheeks. He so nearly stumbled and fell 
in his absent-minded despondency, that the war 
correspondents sprang forward to catch him. 
When his little son, William, died in February, 

1862, he often sobbed at his desk, fell into the 
deepest melancholy whenever the loss was men- 
tioned, and Mrs. Lincoln for a time was sincerely 
alarmed for his mental condition. 

His clemency and charity, to call it by its right 
name plain kindness of heart, were not easily rec- 
oncilable with his resolute attitude in the con- 
duct of the war. His friendly sympathy went out 
to the poor and men and women in any kind of 
affliction. He tempered war's hard necessities at 
every point at which his personal influence could 
be exerted by modifying the brutal exactions of 
the service, and multitudes came to the White 
House upon every kind of business, especially re- 
garding the release of prisoners and the com muta- 
tion of harsh sentences. He denied himself to no 
one, and exposed himself as his friends often re- 



322 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

minded him to very unnecessary annoyances and 
risks. " As for myself," Mr. Lincoln replied to all 
such observations, the true democrat he always 
was, " I feel though the tax on my time is heavy — 
that no hours of my day are better employed than 
those which thus bring me again within the direct 
contact and atmosphere of the average of our 
whole people. Men moving only in an official 
circle are apt to become merely official — not to say 
arbitrary — in their ideas and are apter and apter 
with each passing day to forget that they only hold 
power in a representative capacity. Now this is 
all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions 
of all who claim to have business with me twice 
each week, and every applicant for audience has to 
take his turn as if waiting to be shaved in a 
barber's shop. Many of the matters brought to 
my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of 
more or less importance, and all serve to renew in 
me a clearer and more vivid image of that great 
popular assemblage out of which I sprang, and to 
which at the end of two years I must return." ' 

Lincoln called these receptions his " public opin- 
ion baths. ' ' They were notable in bringing forward 
a great number of persons who had suffered by the 
war and who wished to describe their grievances to 
the president in person to increase his constitutional 
fund of sadness. Attorney -General Bates com- 
plained that "should the applicant be a woman, a 
wife, a mother, or a sister in nine cases out of ten 
1 Carpenter, " Six Months at the White House," p. 281. 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 

her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail. ' ' T 1 1 . • 
signature "A. Lincoln" upon a paper overruling 
an order issued by the regularly constituted mill 
tary authorities, often aroused the anger of Secre 
tary Stanton and generals in the held, who fell that 
executive intervention was disturbing to the service. 
It prevented the enforcement of discipline. Com 
nianders like Butler besought the president not bo 
interfere with the regular processes of martial law, 
and Stanton more than once fumed about in his 
impulsive way because appeal was taken from his 
decrees and requests that he had refused were 
granted. The lease of life of many poor fellows was 
extended, and acts of kindness and mercy in behalf 
of prisoners under sentence were performed repeat- 
edly in response to personal appeals. 

Once when there was a question as to the sanity 
of the prisoner, a boy confined at Elmira, N. Y., 
the president sent a reprieve by telegraph over no 
less than four different lines, so anxious was he to 
prevent the execution of the sentence. In January, 
1864, Governor Hoadley of Ohio telegraphed that a 
deserter was to be shot the next day without a sub- 
mission of the facts to the president. Mr. Lincoln 
remarked that while the case was " really a very 
bad one" he had already commuted the sentence to 
imprisonment during the war at hard labor. ' ' 1 
did this," he added, "not on any merit in the ens.-, 
but because I am trying to evade the butchering 
business lately." 

One day an attractive looking young woman 



324 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

came to the White House and obtained an inter- 
view. By her story it appeared that the day after 
she was married her husband, whom she addressed 
as Fred, had been obliged to rejoin his command. 
Later he obtained leave to go home for the honey- 
moon. While absent, a peremptory order to return 
to the service was issued in preparation for an im- 
portant movement. The young man, in his absorp- 
tion did not see it, and upon returning to his regi- 
ment was dismissed. The bride came to plead for 
his reinstatement. " You say, my child," the pres- 
ident replied in his fatherly way, after listening to 
the tale in quizzical amusement, "that Fred was 
compelled to leave the day after the wedding. 
Poor fellow, I don't wonder at his anxiety to get 
back, and if he stayed a little longer than he ought 
to have done we'll have to overlook his fault this 
time." Lincoln gave her a card to Stanton who 
after his manner rebuked her for taking such a 
matter to the president and refused the request. 
Returning to the White House for a second inter- 
view she met Lincoln on the stairway. " Well, my 
dear, have you seen the secretary?" said he. 
" Yes, Mr. Lincoln, and he seemed very angry with 
me for going to you. Won't you speak to him for 
me?" "I shall see that the order is issued," the 
president replied. It was issued, and the pathetic 
sequel to the incident is that the young man laid 
down his life in the Union service on the field of 
Gettysburg. 
An old man came to the White House to say that 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 

his sou, who was in General Butler's command, 
would be shot on a certain day unless the president, 
in his mercy, would forgive the offense. He had 
come a long distance. Lincoln regretted thai he 
could do nothing, for just yesterday he had received 
this telegram from Butler : "I pray you not to in- 
terfere with the courts-martial of the army. STou 
will destroy all discipline among our sold ins.'' 
Lincoln watched his visitor's grid* and (hen < \ 
claimed, "I jings ! Butler or no Butler, here goes," 
and wrote his order : " Job Smith is not to be shot 
until further orders from me. A. Lincoln." Tin* 
old man, reading these words, was disappointed. 
He had come for a pardon. "My old friend, I see 
you are not very well acquainted with me," Lin- 
coln explained consolingly. "If your son never 
looks on death till further orders come from me to 
shoot him, he will live to be a great deal older than 
Methusaleh." 

In one case Butler, notorious for his severities, 
seems himself to have doubted whether a sentence 
should be carried into execution, whereupon Lin- 
coln looked up and said : " You asking me to par- 
don some poor fellow ! Give me that pen ! ' ' 

To Speaker Colfax, in justifying a course that 
sterner men criticised, the president observed : "It 
makes me rested after a hard day's work if I can 
find some good excuse for saving a man's life, and I 
go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing 
of my name will make him and his family and his 
friends." 



326 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Mr. Lincoln was loth to punish innocent Confed- 
erate prisoners for cruelties practiced upon Federal 
negroes. Being recommended to retaliate in kind 
for the sufferings that Union soldiers were com- 
pelled to undergo in Southern stockades, he said : 
' 'Whatever others may say or do I never can, and 
I never will be accessory to such treatment of 
human beings." 

His labors as a peacemaker between leaders of 
hostile political factions, between members of his 
cabinet, and in defense of Union generals when 
their action subjected them to public criticism, 
were among the greatest of his services at the 
White House. Disaffected politicians, leaders of 
delegations bearing resolutions passed at public 
meetings, and men of all sorts with plans for the 
better conduct of the government and the more suc- 
cessful prosecution of the war, were patiently heard, 
their objections met and their anger allayed. Al- 
though the public, except that part of it which was 
always devotedly friendly, grew increasingly im- 
I)atient, early in 1862, for McClellan to move upon 
Eichinond, the president contented himself with the 
remark that if the general did not want to use the 
army he would like to borrow it provided he could 
see how "it could be made to do something.' 7 
After the betrayal of Pope, Lincoln was still mag- 
nanimous and declared that, " there is no one in 
the army who can man these fortifications and lick 
these troops of ours into shape half as well as he 
can." On another occasion, in his charitable way, 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 327 

he was heard to say of McClellan: tk S<> pleasant and 
scholarly a gentleman can never fail to secure pel 

soiial friends. In fact 

" ' Even his failings lean to virtue's side.' 

A keen sense of genins in another and a reverence 
for it that forced expression was out of place al Fa i r 
Oaks, as beautiful things sometimes will be. II<- 
was lost in admiration of General Lee, and filled 
with that feeling, forbore to conquer him. The 
quality that would prove noble generosity in ;i his- 
torian does not fit the soldier." l 

There were three occasions in the course of the 
war when Lincoln's disappointment was grievous, 
and his forbearance seemed to be on the point of 
exhaustion. These were when McClellan failed al 
Malvern Hill to advance upon Bichmond and 
closed the Peninsular campaign, when Hooker did 
not support Sedgwick at Ohancellorsville, and when 
Meade neglected to follow and attack Lee at the 
bend in the Potomac after the battle of Gettysburg. 
But, he observed afterward philosophically, do 
word of censure escaping his lips, that with shells 
shrieking in his ears, he might have acted as those 
three generals did. He was constantly called to 
intercede in behalf of his impetuous Secretary of 
War, and bore with the greatest tolerance with Mr. 
Chase while that secretary used his cabinet place 
as a stepping-stone to the presidency. 

Singularly contrasted with the constitutional sad- 

1 Carpenter, p. 227. 



328 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

ness and the almost womanly sensitiveness of Mr. 
Lincoln were other traits of character, his firmness 
and rude strength, his frequent outbursts of mirth 
and his banality. There were many times when he 
was strong even against feminine appeal. A woman 
who came to Washington from a town in Virginia, 
complained that a church had been seized by the 
Union army for use as a hospital. "As there are 
only two or three wounded soldiers in it," said she, 
" I came to see if you would not let us have it, as 
we want it very much to worship God in." Lincoln 
answered that there would be another battle in all 
likelihood in that neighborhood very soon, u and my 
candid opinion is," he added, " that God wants that 
church a great deal more for poor wounded Union 
soldiers than for Secesh people to worship in." 

A man came and bitterly denounced Secretary 
Stanton. The president, according to Mr. Colfax, 
replied : " Go home, my friend, and read atten- 
tively the tenth verse of the thirtieth chapter of 
Proverbs," which upon investigation proved to be : 
" Accuse not a servant to his master lest he curse 
thee and thou be found guilty." 

His reply to a delegation of New Yorkers, said to 
represent $50,000,000 in money in their own per- 
sons, who came to Washington to implore the 
president to protect the city from bombardment by 
Confederate cruisers was decisive. " Gentlemen," 
he said, "I am by the constitution commander-in- 
chief of the army and navy of the United States, 
and as a matter of law, I can order anything done 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 329 

that is practicable to be done; but as a matter of 
fact I am not in command of the gunboats or ships 

of war — as a matter of fact I do not know exactly 
where they are, but presume they arc actively 
engaged. It is impossible for me, in the condition 
of things, to furnish you a gunboat. The credit of 
the government is at a very low ebb. Greenbacks 
are not worth more than forty or fifty cents on the 
dollar, and in this condition of things, if J was 
worth half as much as you gentlemen are repr< sented 
to be, and as badly frightened as you seem to be, I 
would build a gunboat and give it to the govern 
nient." 

One day a delegation called upon the president 
to ask for the appointment of a friend to a consular 
position in the Sandwich Islands. The recommen- 
dation was made, they explained, because of the 
man's fitness for the post and also because of the 
state of his health, which necessitated his living in 
a place blessed with a balmy climate. Lincoln 
listened attentively. "Gentlemen, I am sorry to 
say," he remarked finally, "that there arc eight 
other applicants for that place and they are all 
sicker than your man." 

Three men who came again and again to sell the 
United States a new torpedo which, in their opinion, 
would quickly bring the war to an end were referred 
to Secretary Stanton, the chief of ordnance, the 
general-in-chief of the army, and at last returned to 
Mr. Lincoln rather insolently demanding a reply to 
their proposals. Thereupon the president pro- 



330 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ceeded to relate with elaboration the story of a boy 
in the West who went to Sunday-school. He 
reached the chapter in which is recited the trials in 
the fiery furnace of Shadrach, Meshach and 
Abednego. He was unable to remember their 
names, and was reproved repeatedly for his stupid- 
ity in learning them. One day, having again got 
to the difficult place in the lesson, the teacher said : 
"Now tell me the names of the men in the fiery 
furnace." "Oh," said the boy, " here come those 
three infernal bores. I wish the devil had them." 

A woman in an imperious mood is said once to 
have visited President Lincoln. "Mr. President," 
she began in a declamatory style, "you must give 
me a colonel's commission for my son. Sir, I 
demand it, not as a favor but as a right. Sir, my 
grandfather fought at Lexington. Sir, my uncle 
was the only man who did not run away at Bladens- 
burg. Sir, my father fought at New Orleans and 
my husband was killed at Monterey." "I guess, 
madam," Lincoln replied dryly, " your family has 
done enough for the country. It is time to give 
somebody else a chance." 

The most peculiar of the inconsistencies of Lin- 
coln's character was the boisterous mirth that would 
fill him immediately after a fit of the most painful 
despondency, and the lack of breeding he displayed 
in relating a vulgar anecdote when thousands were 
dead or dying on the battle-field and the fate of the 
nation was hanging by a slender thread. In the 
depths of distress, pacing the floor after a night of 



LINCOLN, THE M A \ ; {. 1 1 

sleepless anxiety and self-reproach, an hour later, 
very likely, he was telling a Western anecdote, and 
laughing loudly at the jest with callers who press* «l 
in from the anteroom in which in en and women 
sometimes sat for days together, awaiting tin- <>p 
portunity for an audience. The distant, dream} 
look vanishing from his eyes, his Legs crossed, his 
hands locked over the knees, his tall frame rocking 
to and fro with uncontrollable merriment, In- re- 
lated his jest, very often to the amusement of his 
guests as well as of himself, but sometimes too t<> 
their secret if not unconcealed displeasure. " Thai 
laugh," one of his callers remarked as it echoed 
through the White House, "has been the presi 
dent's life preserver." He was once heard to say 
that he believed he would die but for the relaxat ion 
that came from the reading of Artemus Ward, P. 
V. Nasby, Orpheus C. Kerr and the relation of hu- 
morous stories. One always reminded him of 
another. The president's "That reminds me of a 
story," came to be a jocular phrase in all parts of 
the country. It was the subject of laughter when 
he and Mr. Seward met the Confederate commis- 
sioners at the Hampton Eoads conference ; it was a 
part of the comedian's stock in trade at the theatre 
the night of Mr. Lincoln's assassination. His mel- 
ancholy returned after a sally of this kind with 
surprising rapidity, indeed as suddenly as it had 
disappeared. 

"They say I tell a great many stories," the 
president observed to a friend. " I reckon I do, but 



332 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

I have found in the course of a long experience that 
common people 77 — repeating the words — " common 
people, take them as they run, are more easily in- 
fluenced and informed through the medium of a 
broad illustration than in any other way, and as to 
what the hypercritical few may think, I don't 
care.' 7 The president also found the anecdote-tell- 
ing art a great convenience when, as often hap- 
pened, it was necessary to avoid committing him- 
self positively on difficult issues. "When men 
bred in courts, accustomed to the world, or versed 
in diplomacy, would use some subterfuge or would 
make a polite speech or give a shrug of the shoul- 
ders as a means of getting out of an embarrassing 
position, 77 said William H. Russell, "Mr. Lincoln 
raises a laugh by some west- country anecdote, and 
moves off in the cloud of merriment produced by 
his joke. 77 

It was not because the president chose to enforce 
truths through anecdote that he was criticised, but 
because his stories were so inelegant, and because 
inappropriate occasions were so frequently selected 
for the telling of them. Mr. Lincoln 7 s friends have 
endeavored in vain to prove the unexceptionable 
character of his anecdotes by repeating many that 
he undoubtedly told, though it is quite certain that 
not a few were ascribed to him that never passed 
his lips. Illustrations serve but to deepen the un- 
favorable view with those who are discriminating 
as to their standards of elegance in thought and ex- 
pression. His stories related for the most part, to 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 

ploughing, Irish laborers, darky boys, coons, rep 
tiles, lice, skunks, monkeys and animals, objects 
and scenes which do not come with in the range of 
attention of well-bred men. It was amid such sur- 
roundings that he had lived in Kentucky, Indiana 
and Illinois, and his allusions wore naturally to 
things most familiar to him. Every man's Ian 
guage, if it be not an affectation, is a reflection of 
his thoughts, and one's thoughts are of what one 
has seen and experienced. While some argued I liat 
there was no occasion when a president could 
properly relate such stories as his, many more 
wished that if he must tell them, he would make 
better choice of the times for indulging in them. 
In such a matter a president maybe given little 
advice, and the disapproving scowls of Secretary 
Stanton, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts and 
others who listened, often quite unwillingly, never 
served as the correctives they were intended to be. 
He would begin a cabinet meeting, called to face 
some great crisis, by reading aloud from the writ- 
ings of Artemus Ward and received the returns of 
the election at the War Department in 1864, to the 
intense disgust of its secretary, with hilarious 
laughter evoked by the letters of the humorist 
Nasby, which Mr. Lincoln carried in a pocket or in 
his hat, and frequently brought forth in the hope 
that they would amuse others as much as they 
always amused him. 

Senator Wilson once brought Goldwin Smith and 
a group of reverend Englishmen to introduce them 



334 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

to the president. Mr. Lincoln wore slippers that 
exhibited blue socks. It was one of those occasions, 
when upon the approach of his guests, he slowly 
drew his feet from distant parts of the room, and 
beginning to rise, continued that movement, until 
he looked down on all about him. He inquired for 
the health of John Bright, and then proceeded to 
relate an anecdote about "darky 'rithmetic." 
While he had been quite apt in welcoming William 
Howard Eussell, the American correspondent of the 
London Times, remarking of that newspaper that it 
is " one of the greatest powers of the world ; in fact 
I don't know anything which has much more power 
except perhaps the Mississippi," he was by no 
means so successful upon the occasion of the visit 
of the Marquis of Hartington. "Hartington! 
Hartington ! ' ' exclaimed Mr. Lincoln, catching at 
the name. " Why that rhymes with Partington." 

The version of the remark which he made in re- 
ply to the British minister when the latter presented 
himself to deliver Queen Victoria's announcement 
of the betrothal of the Prince of Wales, seems quite 
incredible, although it is said to have a basis of 
fact. Lord Lyons, who was a bachelor, visited the 
White House with Secretary Seward, and after de- 
livering his message as the queen's minister, he was 
solemnly addressed by the president of the United 
States as follows : ' ' Lord Lyons, go thou and do 
likewise." 

When Seward resigned in 1862 because of Chase's 
presence in the cabinet, and Chase was induced to 






LINCOLN. THE MAN 336 

follow the example, the president exclaimed in 
glee: "Now I can ride. I have got a pumpkin in 
each end of my bag." 

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln followed Edward 
Everett, who was the orator of the day, in a short 
address at Gettysburg, at the dedication of the 
national cemetery, where the soldiers slain a few 
months before were laid, many of them in nameless 
graves. On this occasion, he asked the nation to 
reconsecrate itself to the great tasks of the war, 
recommending "that from these honored dead we 
take increased devotion to that cause for which they 
gave the last full measure of devotion; that we 
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have 
died in vain; that this nation shall have a new 
birth of freedom ; and that government of the peo- 
ple, by the people, for the people shall not perish 
from the earth." By one eulogist the addres> is 
compared to the Sermon on the Mount. It Is as 
serted that it was written on a piece of pasteboard 
on the president's knee, while on the train on tin* 
way to the battle-field, although Lamon alleges that 
it was brought out of its author's hat, where it had 
been placed for safekeeping, after deliberate prep- 
aration earlier at Washington. General Fry, who 
had been detailed by the War Department to escort 
the president to Gettysburg, upon going to the 
White House, found that Mr. Lincoln was not yet 
ready. As but a little time remained before the 
train's departure, it was suggested that he shoii hi 
make haste. The president proceeded to tell a 






336 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

story. "I feel about that," said he, "as the con- 
vict in one of our Illinois towns felt when he was 
going to the gallows. As he passed along the road 
in custody of the sheriff, the people, eager to see 
the execution, kept crowding and pushing past 
him. At last he called out: i Boys, you needn't 
be in such a hurry to get ahead. There won't 
be any fun till I get there.'" 1 When he sat 
down after the delivery of this beautiful and im- 
mortal address the president, thinking he had not 
done himself credit, turning to his friend Lamon 
said : "Lamon, that speech won't scour." 

The allegation which was published in the news- 
papers that the president, accompanied by several 
friends, visited Antietam in a wagon while slain 
Union soldiers still lay about the field unburied, 
Lamon singing negro melodies at Lincoln's re- 
quest, was incorrect only in the matter of time. 
The visit was made several days after the battle, 
and the dead had all been placed in their graves. 
The president called for a song to raise his spirits in 
a place of sorrowful memories. 

Great battles were fought, thousands fell on the 
field, the enemy threatened Washington, but Lin- 
coln curiously alternated his deep and sincere an- 
guish with unbridled gayety. That large numbers 
of men should have misunderstood his character 
and looked upon him as not a few did, as a Nero 
who fiddled while Eome was burning, need not oc- 
casion great astonishment. 

1 " Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. 403. 



LINCOLN, TIIK MAN 



That a man, sometimes the saddest and at other 
times the most mirthful, a man who rose in a 
moment from vulgar things to great nobility, this 
moment weak before a woman's appeal and tin- 
next firmly executing a great war measure, should 
exhibit other sharp contrasts of character, is QOt in 
the least degree surprising. Another Incongruity 
of Mr Lincoln's composition is to be found in his 
use of the English language. In one speech or let- 
ter his style is of a perfect purity, while in another 
it is of a quality beneath an educated man's con- 
tempt. A speech that will be a model of chaste 
English so long as the language lives, was followed 
very likely by some deliverance which showed that 
his learning was a garment not long before assumed, 
and that in relaxation he was constantly ready to 
revert to the Illinois frontier type, which but for 
great emergencies he still faithfully represented. 
He "guessed" and " reckoned" instead of think 
ing, knowing and believing. He asked the Union 
generals to pursue the enemy and "pitch into 
him," and once instructed Grant to "hold on with 
bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as 
possible." To Hooker he wrote on one occasion : 
"I would not take any risk of being entangled 
upon the river like an ox jumped half over a fence, 
liable to be torn by dogs in front and rear, without 
a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other." 

When the representatives of the National Union 
League came from Baltimore, after the Republican 
Convention's adjournment in that city in 18G4, to 



338 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

congratulate Mr. Lincoln upon his nomination for 
a second term, he told them that the honor had 
fallen to him not because he was the greatest or 
best man in America ; it was rather, said he, be- 
cause the convention had concluded that "it is not 
best to swap horses while crossing the river, and 
that I am not so poor a horse but that they might 
make a botch of it in trying to swap." 

Speaking as a lawyer another time, he said that 
he supposed the people thought he had "managed 
their case ' ? well enough to trust him to ' ' carry it 
up to the next term." 

To a crowd which, with a band of music, on 
January 31, 1865, came to the White House to con- 
gratulate him upon the adoption by Congress of the 
Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln, appearing at a 
window over the portico, observed that "the great 
job is ended." ! 

On July 7, 1863, in response to the serenaders 
who came so often, he referred to the victories at 
Gettysburg followed by the surrender of Vicksburg 
to Grant on the Fourth of July, which was a fitting 
day, he remarked, for "the cohorts of those who 
opposed the Declaration that all men are created 
equal" to "turn tail and run." Continuing, he 
said : " These are trying occasions, not only in suc- 
cess, but for the want of success. I dislike to men- 
tion the name of one single officer lest I might do 
wrong to those I might forget. Eecent events bring 
up glorious names and particularly prominent ones, 

1 Arnold, p. 366. 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 

but these I will not mention. Having said this 
much, I will now take the music." ' Speeches 
commonplace in sentiment and ungrammatica] in 
structure cannot well be reconciled with the 
Gettysburg address, the second inaugural or the 
letter he wrote to Mrs. Bixby of Boston, a printed 
copy of which is preserved in a conspicuous place 
in one of the colleges at Oxford. The letter reads : 

"Dear Madam: 

"I have been shown in the files of the War 
Department a statement of the adjutant -general of 
Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons 
who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I 
feel how weak and fruitless must beany words of 
mine which should attempt to beguile you from the 
grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot re- 
frain from tendering to you the consolation that 
may be found in the thanks of the republic they 
died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father 
may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and 
leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 
and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours 
to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of 
freedom. 

" Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 

' i Abraham Lincoln . ' ' 

Beneath this letter the college authorities have 
appended this comment, "One of the finest speci- 
mens of pure English extant." 

Of Lincoln's second inaugural address on March 
4, 1865, the London Spectator remarked: "We 
cannot read it without a renewed conviction that 
1 "Speeches," Vol. II, p. 366. 



340 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

it is the noblest political document known to his- 
tory. . . . Surely none was ever written under 
a stronger sense of the reality of God's government. 
And certainly none written in a period of passion- 
ate conflict, ever so completely excluded the par- 
tiality of victorious faction and breathed so pure a 
strain of mingled justice and mercy." 

The closing sentences of this address are as fol- 
lows : 

" Fondly do we hope, — fervently do we pray, — 
that the mighty scourge of war may pass away. 
Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth 
piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty 
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 
'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether.' With malice toward none, with char- 
ity for all, with firmness in the right, let us strive 
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 
on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the 
nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and 
lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

Declared by high critical authorities to have 
been " one of the greatest masters of English prose," 
he yet could fall to the most slipshod thought and 
the commonest utterance, and was guilty of the 
descent at times of vast meaning and solemnity. 



LINCOLN, THE MAN :;n 

It is not to be expected that any man can live I 
life at an exhibition pitch. Relaxation must come 
from time to time, and he is especially prone to 
chafe under higher discipline, if the position is an 
acquired and unnatural one. When account is 
taken of the cares and responsibi lit Lesthat the nation 
heaped upon him to weary his mind and oppress 
his spirits, Mr. Lincoln's average must be held to 
have been remarkably high. His aberral ions were 
fewer as his character was developed and enlarged in 
his last years. The wonder is not thai tie sometimes 
fell, but that he ever could, with the means at hand, 
rise to the noble heights upon which he often stood. 

It will always be asked how it is that a man bo 
little disciplined in the art of writing, and with ;i 
relatively narrow acquaintance with literature, 
could have gained so notable a mastery of the Eng- 
lish tongue. He opened few books, but what he 
read he remembered, and if it fitted his moods it 
remained with him. The poem beginning, "Oh, 
why should the spirit of mortal be proud," was 
almost a part of him. He was particularly fond of 
the first and last groups of verses : 

"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? 
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, 
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave 
He passes from life to his rest in the grave. 

" 'Tis the wink of an eye — 'tis the draught of a breath 
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud ; — 
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud." 



342 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln also frequently recited Oliver Wendell 
Holmes's "Last Leaf," dwelling upon the fourth 
stanza, — 

" The mossy marbles rest 
On the lips that he has prest 

In their bloom, 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb." 

He enjoyed a fugitive poem beginning, — 

" Tell me ye winged winds 
That round my pathway roar, 
Do ye not know some spot 
Where mortals weep no more ? 
Some lone and pleasant vale, 
Some valley of the west, 
Where free from toil and pain, 
The weary soul may rest ? 
The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low 
And sighed for pity as it answered, No." 

Ballads gleaned from newspapers and accidental 
sources lingered in his mind if they touched some 
sad, responsive chord in his nature. He knew 
Shakespeare, but not all of the plays. His favorite 
was Hamlet, where he found the guiding principle 
of his life — 

" There's a divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough hew them how we will." 

He repeated frequently and with visible enjoy- 
ment the soliloquies in Hamlet, Macbeth and Eich- 



LINCOLN, THE MAN 343 

ard III. Upon one occasion, when some Scandi 
uaviaus were brought to meet him at the White 
House, he surprised them and their sponsor by re- 
citing a poem descriptive of the rugged beauties of 
Norse scenery, long cherished in his memory, 
though the source had been forgotten. 

What was not sad in his reading, as in his own 
nature, was riotously humorous, and he knew the 
work of all the men who extracted fun from the 
war. For him there was no literat ore bel ween antip- 
odal points — tragedy and Petroleum Nasby. Be 
told Senator Harris that he had never read a novel 
through in his life, although he had once begun 
"Ivanhoe." 

Lincoln's style was so good because it was so nat 
ural. It was not shaped in a mind confused by much 
indulgence at the founts that are supplied by the tire- 
less modern printing press. Helped by Shakespeare •, 
the principal source of his inspiration was the Bible, 
of which he was an attentive student. He quoted 
from the Scriptures with great ease and accuracy. 
His literary manner has that terse purity and direct 
force acquired in no surer way than by study of tin- 
Scriptural writings, and adherence to their models. 
Mr. Lincoln owed much of the nobility of his 
thought to the hours and days he had spent with 
the First of Books, and from that source, too, came 
his standards of literary form which, when he chose 
to be true to them, yielded results that will always 
assure him a preeminent place among the masters 
of English prose writing. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

THE END OF THE WAR 

When Grant, with those cabalistic initials, a U. 
S.," that wags surmised might make his name Uncle 
Sam, Unconditional Surrender, Use Sambo and 
several other things, still untried in larger fields, was 
brought on from the West to receive his lieutenant- 
general's commission and assume direction of all 
the armies of the United States, he at once took his 
place at the front with the Army of the Potomac. 
He was no bureaucrat, and it was not a stage of the 
war in which such a commander was needed. 
Scott fought battles while lying upon a couch in 
Washington j McClellan when he was not parading 
upon a horse was a social lion in drawing-rooms, 
or the centre of a group of anti -administration 
politicians ; Halleck, Stanton and Lincoln could 
direct battles at a telegraph instrument in front of 
wall maps. The need now was for an unflinching 
fighter, with a prestige gained by great victories, 
and in Grant was found embodied the traits which 
it was thought would lead to the early capture of 
Eichmond and the surrender of the army that con- 
tinued to hold the Confederate capital so defiantly. 
There was a suggestion that he should attempt to 
break' the backbone of the Confederacy by leading 



THE END OF THE WAI; :;i;, 

an invasion of the South at the head <>f the Western 
armies, a command afterward delegated t<> Gen 
eral Sherman. But this plan did not meet wiih bia 
favor. He chose still to make Virginia the centre 
of the contest, outside operations being incidental 
and contributory to the long sought object of BO 
many campaigns. 

The war was now to be conducted on a great 
scale, in terrible earnest. By means of vast com 
binations with generals in different positions, the 
chief of whom were Sherman and Sheridan, whose 
worth Grant had discovered in the West, attacks 
were directed at vital points of the Confederacy. 
The military machine was soon working with tin- 
precision of a clock. Lincoln surrendered practi- 
cally all care of the details of field management, 
and entrusted the task to Grant, who at once be- 
came the comprehending genius wherever a man 
wore the blue uniform. The president indeed, 
with a view to secrecy and more effective service, 
preferred that he should be left in ignorance of in- 
tended movements. 

The commissariat of the Army of the Potomac, 
while it had not reached this position without dis- 
honesty and fraud upon the public treasury, was of 
remarkable efficiency. Materiel was forwarded 
with perfect order and despatch. The baggage 
trains which brought up the rear extended for 
twenty or thirty miles. The army itself was the 
best, as it was the largest body of seasoned soldiery 
ever brought together upon the American con- 



346 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

tinent, and although the Northern people felt that 
they had already made all the sacrifices that 
should be required of them, Lincoln ordered a 
draft of 500,000 more troops in July, 1864, and a 
little later called upon the states for 500,000 volun- 
teers, a demonstration of untouched resources that 
probably did more than any other one thing to 
shake the resolution of the Confederate leaders and 
convince them of the hopelessness of the struggle 
they had so inadvisedly undertaken. It was 
Grant's plan " to hammer continuously against the 
armed force of the enemy and his resources until 
by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should 
be nothing left to him but an equal submission with 
the loyal section of our common country to the 
constitution and laws of the land." Everywhere 
on the great map of war, commanding generals 
were to engage the enemy simultaneously and per- 
mit of no massing of troops at single threatened 
points on the line of Confederate defense. 

The most important movement not directly under 
Grant's eye, was Sherman's invasion, the objective 
of which was Johnston's army, that might be met 
somewhere in the heart of Georgia. The general - 
in-chief, in the meantime, with Meade and the 
Army of the Potomac, numbering about 120,000 
men, would move upon Lee with more than 60,000 
on a selected route, likely sooner or later to lead 
them into Eichmond. In the night on the 4th of 
May, 1864, the march was begun upon the Con- 
federate capital, the army being led by Sheridan 



THE EKD OF THE WAR 

in command of large troops of horse. Thus the 
Eapidan was crossed and Lee, selecting that dark 

and tangled wood, appropriately called the Wilder 
ness, as his place of defense, pushed his soldiers 
into this natural shelter, that he and his generals 
knew as well as though they had been its regularly 
appointed keepers and foresters. It was the same 
thicket that had served so well against Hook er in 
the battle of Chancellorsville. Here in this bloody 
cock pit of Virginia the armies met anions tin- 
scrub trees, matted together with briery vines, a 
jungle that the unknowing could not traverse. 
Detachments, lost to the view of their comrades, 
were compelled to fight single handedly. After 
two days of murderous combat among the im 
penetrable underbrush Grant sending Sheridan on 
a detour by which the cavalry swept up to the 
gates of Richmond, aimed to march around Lee 1 > y 
way of Spottsylvania, but his advance met there ;i 
strong division of Confederate troops, very soon 
reenforced and fortified, and buttressed on knobs 
and hills in a practically impregnable position. 

Grant's motto, which was the simple rule of 
action of a famous Russian general, "Advance and 
strike," led him to choose a direct offensive m<>\ « 
ment in spite of obvious obstacles. He assault ed 
this natural fortress with the cool and hopeful 
tenacity that was his strongest characteristic, re- 
gardless of the fate of his men. He wrote to 
Washington that the result was in his favor, and 
that he proposed "to fight it out on this line, if it 



348 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

takes all summer." Day after day, for a fortnight 
in May, except when operations were interrupted 
by rain and miry and impassable roads, the two 
armies met without apparent gain for either side. 
The dead lay in heaps, entrenchments were taken 
at the point of the bayonet, great trees were cut off 
like reeds by the shot, thickets were set ablaze to 
incinerate the wounded, prisoners were taken on 
each side in hand-to-hand encounters, in what 
Grant himself said was the most desperate fighting 
ever witnessed on this continent. The carnage had 
only begun, although nearly 40,000 men, a third of 
the great army with which Grant started out had 
been killed, wounded or captured. On one day, 
the 12th of May, at Spottsylvania, the Union loss 
was 6,000 men. 

Undiscouraged, it was still Grant's hope to pass 
Lee and get into Richmond by the northern route, 
which resulted in another sanguinary and wholly 
unsuccessful battle, from the Federal standpoint, at 
Cold Harbor. The army was led out for its final 
assault upon the works after some preliminary 
skirmishing on the 3d of June at early dawn. In a 
few hours the Federals lost between 5,000 and 
6,000 soldiers, and repulsed at practically every 
point, by men impregnably entrenched, fighting 
with appalling fury, Grant was obliged this time 
to confess that he had been terribly defeated. 
Earthworks were not to be stormed before Rich- 
mond as they were at Chattanooga, merely by the 
spirit of the troops and the pugnacity of their com- 



THE END OP THK WAR 349 

manders. Within five miles of the Confederate 
capital, he was unable to get in and was compelled 
to change his tactics, opposing earthworks with 
earthworks and turned his attention to the develop- 
ment of his plan for an attack upon the city from 
another direction. He would move upon Peters 
burg, Eichmond's back door. He would go l><- 
yond his object and attack the strongly fortified 
bastion ten miles up the Appomattox from City 
Point, where that river joins the James, and twenty 
two miles south of Kichmond, taking it by sur- 
prise, if possible, by the slow processes of siege, ii* 
compelled to adopt that course. 

Petersburg contained about 18,000 inhabitants, 
and it stood in such strategical relation to the cap- 
ital, as military men recognized very well, that Lee 
would evacuate the city when robbed of this 
important fortified base. Although the army 
passed around Eichmond with skill, celerity and 
the necessary secrecy, the Union commanders were 
not fortunate enough to reach Petersburg in time to 
possess themselves of it without stubborn and pro- 
longed fighting. In June, 10,000 more men fell 
before the entrenchments with which Bichmond 
was protected. From the crossing of the Eapidan 
until July 1st, the Army of the Potomac had lost 
50,000 men in killed and wounded, which with the 
missing, increased the sacrifice to 61,400. The 
Army of the James had lost 7,000 men, and regi- 
ments of sick were sent home or to the hospitals as 
a result of the most arduous and, as many thought, 



350 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the most brutal campaigning ever indulged in by a 
civilized commander on a modern battle-field. 

A New York newspaper declared that Grant had 
provided u either a cripple or a corpse for half the 
homes of the North." Lincoln's grief after the 
battles of the Wilderness could scarcely be assuaged. 
He walked his room with tears in his eyes. " Why 
do we suffer reverse after reverse 1 " he broke out. 
" Could we have avoided this terrible bloody war ? 
Was it not forced upon us ? Is it ever to end ? " 
The ambulances, coming into the field hospitals, 
established on the hills overlooking Washington, 
arrived in continuous trains from this terrible 
slaughter-pen. The president, with Mrs. Lincoln, 
gave a personal care to the sick and wounded, 
taking the hands of many of the men and uttering 
words of sympathy, comfort and cheer. But often 
as he drove along the line he gave up to his de- 
spair. "I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it," he 
exclaimed to those nearest him. But all things 
must be borne. The war must be ended and it 
could not be ended, as the exertions of one general 
after another had testified, by any moderate measure 
or temporizing expedient. 

The summer was not productive of important 
results for the army under Grant's immediate 
direction. For nearly seven weeks no rain fell 
upon the parched fields and dusty roads of Vir- 
ginia. No movement could be carried out without 
raising a thick dust that clouded the vision and 
filled the nostrils of man and beast suffocatingly. 



THE END OF THE WAR 361 

A great mine was dug under the Confederate works 
by a regiment of Pennsylvania coal miners, who 
were skilful in shafting and tunneling, and on .July 
30th it was exploded with four tons of powder, 
leaving a monstrous crater into which were thrown 
heavy bodies of Union troops. But few who 
entered ever came back. Many of them being 
negroes, were shot down mercilessly by the Con- 
federate gunners. The movement was marked by 
stupid mistakes, which led to the relief of Burnside 
from further command. 

The successes of the year which cheered the 
popular heart, raised the hopes of the president 
and made his reelection a certainty, came from 
other quarters on the map of war. Sheridan's 
operations in the Shenandoah Valley, Sherman's 
capture of Atlanta and Farragut's spectacular 
victory in Mobile Bay, changed the national temper 
from gloom to joy. General Lee in order, if pos- 
sible, to induce Grant to relax his grip at Peters- 
burg and withdraw a portion of his investing force, 
despatched Early on a daring raid, which had for 
its object the capture of Washington. To shrewd 
observers, the movement had appearance of be- 
ing precisely what it was, a last card in a game 
already lost. The Shenandoah Valley was not only 
a rich feeding ground for the Confederates, but also 
a protected highway, through which they swept 
again and again at will on their way to Maryland, 
Pennsylvania and to the back door of Washington. 
Their secure possession of this avenue into the heart 



352 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of the North, until Sheridan was specially assigned 
to the task, had not been disturbed. Early, in the 
summer of 1864, was sent north through the valley 
to threaten the Federal capital and, if possible, 
possess himself of it, since it was known that its 
defenses were practically bare of experienced troops. 
He soon appeared in front of the city, having reached 
its outer bastions from the west and north, after 
completing the circuit that southern raiding forces 
had so often made before. Maryland and Pennsyl- 
vania towns were compelled to pay him ransom 
money under penalty of pillage, crops were stoleD 
and buildings burned, and he had almost unimpeded 
passage up to the gates of Washington, where from 
a fort, President Lincoln, in person, observed the 
skirmish which led him to think better of his enter- 
prise, although within sight of the dome of the 
capitol, and to betake himself southward again. 
His train was heavy with plunder, but he was 
allowed to return with impunity to his own country. 
Once again the invader made his escape, to send 
forward a little later another force of troops to 
harry Pennsylvania and Maryland, still assured of 
a safe line of retreat. 

To destroy this most valuable line of communi- 
cation, Grant entrusted General Sheridan with a 
movement that speedily had signal results. Still 
but thirty-three years old, this far-seeing, cool and 
discreet, but dashing cavalry leader received the 
brief command to "go in." "Nothing should be 
left to invite the enemy to return," said Grant. 



THE END OF THE WAR 363 

The valley was to be converted into a "barren 
waste.' 7 In a little whih — after the battle of the 
Opeguon — Sheridan was able to pen his famous 
despatch: "We have just sent them whirling 
through Winchester, and we are alter them to 
morrow." But like all Union victories at this 
stage of the war it was an expensive one, and 
Early's force was not yet dispersed. It reformed, 
and strengthened by reinforcements, while Sheri- 
dan's army was busily occupied in destroying 
bridges and seizing provisions, and the redoubtable 
little leader himself had gone to confer with the 
War Department at Washington, the Confederates 
made an assault upon the Union lines at Cedar 
Creek that promised to be a severe disaster to the 
men in blue. Sheridan learned of the catastrophe 
his troops had suffered while returning to his army, 
through fugitives he met at Winchester. He rode 
back on his black charger through his retreat ing 
lines, inspiriting and commanding his men, until at 
the front he changed by the force of his personal 
presence the tide of battle, reformed the stragglers 
into effective regiments, recovered all the ground 
which had been lost in the first impulse of surprise, 
and recaptured many Federal prisoners and guns. 
He was now in secure control of the important por- 
tions of the valley, the darling of the president and 
the hero of all the loyal parts of the Union. 

Meanwhile, in August, Admiral Farragut entered 
Mobile Bay, and in a sensational naval battle closed 
that port to Confederate commerce, a performance 



354 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

that awakened the liveliest satisfaction in the North, 
one more event pointing inevitably to the end of 
the frightful war, which recalling the words of 
Hannibal to Scipio in our fourth readers, had de- 
manded in tribute upon both sides "such costs and 
pains, so many fleets and armies, and so many 
famous captains' lives.' 7 

But the achievements of Sheridan and Farragut 
did less to strengthen President Lincoln' s position 
with the people than the successful march of Sher- 
man into the heart of the South which culminated 
in the capture of Atlanta in the first days of Sep- 
tember. General rejoicing, marked by the pealing 
of bells and the discharge of artillery, accompan- 
ied the announcement of the unqualified success 
of a movement that meant so much to the North in 
the work of breaking up the Confederacy. The 
iron had now been run into the vitals of the rebel- 
lious section, and Sherman with the repose, likened 
by the Confederates to that of a tiger, was impa- 
tient to be off to the sea, for the campaign upon 
which his reputation as a commander will always 
largely depend in the popular mind. For that feat 
he will be praised on one side and bitterly re- 
proached on the other, but whatever the final ver- 
dict, his raid was a powerful influence in deciding 
the great issue. On November 16th, with 60,000 
picked men, stripped of all needless paraphernalia 
he went in, no one knowing where he would come 
out, since telegraphic communication was pur- 
posely broken off. To the tune of "John Brown's 



THE END OP THE WAS 368 

Body," regiment after regiment catching up the 
refrain, this remarkable march was beg on. A man 
who met Lincoln in Washington in a dreamy ret erj 
was obliged to touch him to gain his attention. 
"Oh, excuse me," the president exclaimed as ln- 
awoke, "I was thinking of a man down South/' 
afterward explaining that it was General Sherman 
who so fully absorbed his thoughts. In December, 
1864, when he despatched Colonel Markland from 
Washington with the mails for Sherman's army, to 
be delivered when it should reach the sea, Lincoln 
was asked if he had any personal message. * ' Say 1 1 1 
General Sherman for me," he replied, "whenever 
and wherever you see him, c God bless him, and God 
bless his army.' That is as much as I can say and 
more than I can write." He held his messenger 1 s 
hand for a long time, his lips trembled, the tears 
welled into his eyes, and when Markland looked 
back after his leave-taking, the president was st i 1 1 
standing like a statue, as in mute prayer for the 
success of the great military operation. 

Marching through a rich land, feeding upon the 
corn, sorghum, yams, pigs and chickens which for- 
aging parties, sweeping wide areas and opposed 
only by ineffective bodies of Confederate irregulars 
brought into the camps each evening, the armj 
moved forward irresistibly, destroying railroads, 
factories, shops and every Southern resource calcu- 
lated to prolong the war, until it reached Savannah. 
which Sherman was able to present to President 
Lincoln as a Christmas gift, after a month of re- 



356 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

markable experiences for every man engaged upon 
the expedition. 

It was a bitterly cruel war. The poor and de- 
fenseless felt its terrible brutalities in the South ; 
but the North itself was not spared the suffering 
and indignity that come of great taxes, conscrip- 
tion, widowhood, orphanage and broken homes. 
When the first detachments of Union soldiers 
crossed the Potomac in 1861, and the Virginians 
complained that the Yankees were emptying the 
hen-coops and skimming the cream from pans of 
milk in the spring-houses, old General Scott held 
up his hands in horror. "It is deplorable, it is 
deplorable," he exclaimed. Now Sherman's troops 
were sweeping a belt many miles in width with the 
zest of men out for a holiday, and robbing it of 
every edible thing, burning mills and tearing up 
railroads, to pile the rails L upon blazing heaps of 
sleepers and twist them while red hot into figure 
eights and lovers' knots around the trunks of forest 
trees. Sheridan was converting the rich Shenan- 
doah Valley into a " barren waste." Grant's cav- 
alrymen were raiding, burning and devastating, 
and in July, 1864, he urged that the troops should 
" eat out Virginia clear and clean so that crows fly- 
ing over it for the balance of the season will have 
to carry their provender with them." The North 
looked on in admiration at its brave generals, so 
true is it that one cat will be praised for doing that 
which another cat will be killed for looking at. 
The war, said a European observer, was ' l begun by 



THE END OF THE WAR 

madmen and carried on by devils." "When this 
cruel war is over" became the very feeling refrain 
in a popular song, and magnificent in their deter- 
mination to yield nothing until every possible 
resource had been spent, both sides were pressing 
on to the end. 

Grant remarked that " the rebels have now in 
their ranks their last man. The little boys and old 
men are guarding prisoners, guarding railroad 
bridges and forming a good part of the garrisons 
on entrenched positions. A man lost by them can- 
not be replaced. They have robbed the cradle and 
the grave equally to get their present force." 

Federals and Confederates were brother white 
men, brother Americans. They had been of the 
same national feeling before the war ; they would 
be again. As "Yanks" and "Johnnies" they 
visited each other on picket duty, and exchanged 
newspapers, tobacco and camp stories. They mel 
as friends at brooks and springs to fill their 
canteens, scampering back to their entrenchments 
to face each other as enemies at the first sigual for 
the resumption of hostilities. When Commander 
Le Eoy of the Federal Ossipee met and compelled 
the surrender of Commander J. D. Johnston of the 
Confederate ram Tennessee in Mobile Bay his first 
salutation was, " Hello, Johnston, old fellow. How 
are you?" And when Seward left Hunter a ft ti- 
the Hampton Eoads Conference with a "God bless 
you," the sentiment was in both men's hearts, in 
spite of the savage comment of a Eichmond news 



358 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

paper that the benediction of Satan were better 
than that of Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of State. 

Lincoln continued to share the joy of all victories 
and the remorse of each defeat, though the latter 
now rarely came to the Federals. He visited the 
camps, and once while riding along General But- 
ler's lines, needlessly exposed his tall and con- 
spicuous figure to the enemy's pickets not three 
hundred yards away, always preserved against 
sharpshooters and common assassins, as though 
under some miraculous spell. Grant remained in 
his position before Petersburg throughout the 
winter, in practical inactivity for one hundred days. 
The weather was cold. The officers made their 
quarters in buildings constructed of timber and 
the camp resembled a city. 

The demands for peace, before peace, upon the 
terms that President Lincoln desired, was at all 
possible, took an imperative form. Horace Greeley, 
rendered restless and excitable by the devouring as- 
saults daily made upon the mental system by jour- 
nalism, again gained a considerable degree of noto- 
riety in the summer of 1864 by his peace mission. 
The editor of the New York Tribune had been ap- 
proached by intermediaries who, it was said, 
awaited a conference on the Niagara frontier. It 
turned out that the delegates were entirely un- 
authorized, the whole movement being designed to 
put the president in the position of making ad- 
vances to Richmond in behalf of a cessation of 
hostilities and compromise. 



TIIK END OF THE WAR 359 

Other efforts as aimless and fruitless followed Mr. 

Greeley's. Early hi 1805 Francis P. Blair, Si., was 
provided with a passport, ami secured interviews 
with Jefferson Davis and other Confederate Leaders 
which were edifying to Mr. Lincoln, although he 
shrewdly disclaimed all responsibility for the 
mission, except for the writing of the pass which 
might have been furnished to any man. The 
direct outgrowth of Mr. Blair's visit to Richmond 
was the designation of Alexander 11. Stephens, 
vice-president of the Confederacy ; R. M. T. linn 
ter, ex- Confederate Secretary of State and John A . 
Campbell, assistant Secretary of War as commit 
sioners to confer with representatives of the Union 
on the subject of peace. The three men were 
courteously received by General Grant, who was 
instructed to postpone no military movement be- 
cause of the approaching conference, and Seward 
was sent to Fortress Monroe to meet the South- 
erners. Lincoln himself, upon Grant's recom- 
mendation, joined his Secretary of State, and they 
received Davis's delegates in the saloon of a steamer 
at anchor in Hampton Eoads on February 3d, 
where a discussion was indulged in lasting for four 
hours, and covering the principal questions in dif- 
ference between the two sections, such as the return 
of the Southern states to the Uniou, amnesty, 
slavery and the partition of Virginia. 

When these men had last met it was as friends, 
citizens of a common country which was the ob- 
ject of their mutual pride. Three of them now 



360 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

pretended to be citizens of a new republic. Lincoln 
and Stephens had not seen each other since they 
were in Congress together as Whigs in 1849. 
Seward and Hunter had last touched shoulders in 
the United States Senate. It was a meeting to be 
remembered, a time for reminiscence which, as all 
accounts agree, was freely indulged in, though not 
at the expense of serious debate. It was soon dis- 
covered by Lincoln and Seward that the Southern 
people, in so far as the officers of the Confederacy 
still represented popular feeling, were not yet ready 
to return to their affiliations upon any conditions 
which the North could suitably entertain ; by the 
Southern commissioners that the North was unwill- 
ing to accept, as they expressed it, anything less 
than the unconditional submission that came of 
conquest. They returned to Eichmond to issue a 
last appeal to Southern heroism, while Lincoln and 
Seward made their way back to Washington to set 
in motion, with Grant's aid, the last wheels and 
levers in the relentless machinery which had been 
devised for ending the war. 

Grant's force was now so superior that he could 
man all his lines and at the same time execute 
formidable side movements. Lee, in Eichmond, 
had been so far surrounded, his railroads torn up 
and his lines of communication broken, that his 
position daily became less and less tenable. Al- 
ready in February he knew that the city must be 
evacuated, and was careful to guard his only re- 
maining avenue of escape. Sherman, after resting 



THE END OF THE WAR 361 

at Savannah, continued his triumphal raid north- 
ward through the Carolina* to make it more sure 
that Lee would not escape from the toils. The 
" great anaconda scheme" of 1S(>1 was being 
worked out in 1865, the Confederates being sur- 
rounded and impounded in the states of Virginia 
and North Carolina. Sheridan demolished the Last 
vestiges of Early's army in the .Shenandoah Valley 
and raided Virginia at will ; so closely did Grant 
press upon Petersburg, that on a Sunday morning 
early in April, while Jefferson Davis was at church 
he learned that Lee's lines had been broken in 
several places, and that army, civil officials and all 
the paraphernalia and baggage of the Confederacy 
must be moved at once to safer ground, where a stand 
might yet be made against the powerful enemy. 

The hope was of brief duration. Lee failed to 
receive the stores needed for the subsistence of his 
troops, and it was impossible to feed upon what the 
country yielded. The Federals were too fleet of 
foot for the fugitives. They harried the Confeder- 
ate rear and flank, and detached whole regiments to 
make them prisoners. Finally a large force hav ing 
planted itself on the south side of the retreating 
army at Appomattox Court House about seventy 
miles west of Richmond, Lee surrendered uncondi 
tionally to General Grant on April 9th, leaving on 
the map of war little to be feared but Johnston's 
army, soon to be in the hands of General Sherman. 

Grant did not halt to feast his eyes as many a 
conqueror might have done upon Richmond, the 



362 ABKAHAM LINCOLN 

object of his long conipaign, but Lincoln entered 
the city. In the closing days of March the presi- 
dent visited the army, as he often did when anxiety 
impelled him to mingle with the troops, and he 
thought that his counsel could be better given by 
his presence on the ground. He had the good 
fortune literally to be in at the death of the hunted 
Confederacy. With a small guard of marines who 
rowed him to a wharf in a barge from a United 
States warship, pale and without appearance of 
exultation, he walked to Capitol Square where the 
Stars and Stripes had been planted by a body of 
Federal cavalrymen, and watched the negro troops 
extinguish the flames that had already laid in ruins 
parts of Secessa's capital, fired by its desperate cit- 
izens. He visited that sink hole of suffering, Libby 
Prison, Jefferson Davis's late headquarters, and 
bowed to the negroes who everywhere so respect- 
fully saluted him as their liberator, while the won- 
derful Southern women frowned and pouted, when 
they did not actually shake their small fists at him 
from behind the shutters of their second story 
windows. Many slaves, it is said, leaped into the 
air at sight of him, embracing and kissing each 
other with shouts of "Glory! Glory! Bress de 
Lawd. Bress de Lawd." One ragged old man 
whose crisp, white hair protruded from the crown 
of a dilapidated straw hat, kneeled upon the ground 
and clasped the president's hands with a feeling 
supplication, " May de Lawd bress and keep you, 
Massa Presidum Linkum." 



CHAPTER XIV 

ASSASSINATION 

The Confederates States of America had re- 
ceived no more severe blow than the reelection of 
President Lincoln in November, 1864, and his in- 
auguration for a second term in the following 
March. No very impressive formalities sealed the 
compact the loyal part of the Union had entered 
into to prosecute the war to a successful termina 
tion under the management which they had criti- 
cised, but withal had trusted during the four past 
years. It was no time for political rejoicings ; pub- 
lic interest was centred in military operations, 
particularly in General Grant, who, if he had 
taken the flower of the land as a sacrifice, Mas 
rapidly winning the nation that victory over rebel- 
lion which it yearned for in the deeps of its soul. 
Although Andrew Johnson took the place of Hanni- 
bal Hamlin as vice-president, a change that soon as- 
sumed an unexpected portent, Lincoln's adminis- 
tration was not interrupted by that provision of the 
constitution by which the political calendar is 
marked off into quadrennial periods, and most of 
his ministers continued to serve him in their ac- 
customed places. 

He at last had in view a time when he could en 



364 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

joy the fruits of his policies. IJe was a man made 
great by that powerful aid to greatness, success, 
which he had done much by personal endeavor, 
guided by rare talent and a suitable temperament to 
achieve, but which could not have been his were he 
not favored by the irresistible logic of events and the 
cooperation of other remarkable minds. A time was 
drawing near when men need be slaughtered, homes 
made miserable, the peaceful pursuits of life 
neglected no more. The vision was at hand of a 
reunited, greater, stronger, wiser nation over 
which, at the expressed popular desire, Mr. Lincoln 
would preside for four happier years, the crowning 
period of his unusual term of public service. He 
had borne more for his country than any man who 
had worn the blue uniform upon any military field. 
The lines of care furrowed his countenance, and his 
tears, as he dreamed and sighed and worried in the 
intervals when he was not the incarnation of robust, 
manly strength and comical buffoonery, fell often 
to bathe the altars of the republic which demanded 
of him more than it had any right to expect of the 
human nature pressed into the form of one man. 

He was more thoughtless of his own safety than 
a president should be, even in times of profound 
peace. Conspicuous by reason of his size, mode of 
dress and peculiarity of movement, he was a fair 
mark for Confederate sharpshooters when near the 
military lines, or for misguided miscreants in going 
to and from camps and even while living his daily 
life in Washington. That he expected death as 



ASSASSINATION 366 

some writers assert, evidencing the remarks thai ac 
casionally passed his lips, for instance in the pree 
ence of Harriet Beecher Stowe to whom h«' said, 
"I shall not live to see the end ; this war is killing 
me," is a natural conclusion from a knowledge of a 
character so essentially fatalist. 

At no time could he have felt great dread of 
death. He passed secretly through Baltimore when 
repairing to Washington for his inauguration to 
avoid the dangers of assassination, but the change 
of programme was made only upon the argent so- 
licitation of his friends, and against his own incli- 
nations. He was constantly in receipt of threaten- 
ing letters, but as he said one time "they have 
ceased to give me any apprehension." Men went 
in and out of the White House with little restraint. 
Public receptions were held at frequent intervals, 
and the crowds were given only cursory surveillance. 
His friends advised him that there were many who 
would like to see his tall form dangling from a 
lamp-post, but he took practically no heed of their 
warnings. Noah Brooks used to relate that early 
one morning he met the president at the gateway of 
the White House. " Good-morning, good-mom 
ing," said the chief magistrate of the nation, "1 
am looking for a newsboy. When you get to that 
corner I wish you would start one up this way." 
While they were waiting for a carriage to go to a 
photographer's shop the artist Carpenter says that 
a farmer from some remote part of the country, 
with his wife and two little boys, came up and eyed 



366 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Mr. Lincoln curiously. He asked if he might take 
the hand of the president, who democratically 
granted the privilege, speaking kindly to the man's 
wife and sons. Such incidents were of almost daily 
occurrence in Lincoln's life at Washington. He 
would visit the departments unattended, and with- 
out escorts or guards drove or walked abroad in the 
streets by day or night very heedlessly. "If they 
kill me," he remarked one day, " the next man will 
be just as bad for them, and in a country like this 
where our habits are simple, assassination is always 
possible, and will come if they are determined upou 
it. Do you think the Richmond people would like 
to have Hannibal Hamlin here any better than my- 
self? " 

The presence of guards, he thought, would serve 
only to suggest to the evil-minded the thought of 
attack. " It would never do for a president to have 
guards with drawn sabres at his door," he remarked 
to Mr. Halpine, "as if he fancied he were, or were 
trying to be, or were assuming to be an emperor." 
A small squad of cavalry being detailed, without 
his request, to accompany him to and from the 
Soldiers' Home, some distance out of Washington 
where he had his summer residence, he complained 
that he and Mrs. Lincoln "could not hear them- 
selves talk " for the clatter of the swords and spurs. 
In January, 1862, he wrote to Secretary Stanton, in 
response to the suggestion that he be attended by 
the adjutant-general saying that it would be "an 
uncompensating encumbrance both to him and me. 



ASSASSINATION 867 

When it shall occur to me to go anywhere," the 

president continued, " I wish t<> be free to go at 
once and not to have to notify the adjutant-general 
and wait till he can get ready. It is better, too, for 
the public service that he shall give his time to the 
business of his office and not to personal attendance 
on me." 

At no time did he subject himself to greater peril 
of person than when, accompanied only by a few 
sailors with carbines, he ascended the James River, 
walked a mile and a half into Richmond, onlj 
lately vacated by the Confederate army and its gov- 
ernment, at the moment in the hands of incendiaries 
and drunken men, reveling in the alcohol that at 
Lee's departure was poured into the gutters. No 
enterprise could well have been more foolhardj ; 
none could have testified more eloquently to the 
small estimate Lincoln placed upon the value of 
life to himself or to the nation. He was preserved 
to meet another death. 

Leaving the late capital of the Confederacy on 
April 5th, he returned to Washington, whither In- 
hastened in response to the unhappy news of Sec- 
retary Seward's fall from a carriage by which dis- 
aster that official was disabled for public service. 
On his way he visited the soldiers in the hospitals 
at City Point, grasping many hands and saying 
many kind and comforting words. Brought back 
to face the perplexing problems that attended the 
return of the Southern states to their old places in 
the Uuiou and the treatment to be accorded those 



368 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

who had so long borne arms against the Union, his 
character for forgiveness and benevolence asserted 
itself with all its native strength. He cherished no 
animosities or hates, and his noble temperament 
impelled him to desire the return of the seceded 
states to their old relations with the least possible 
humiliation to the people who had failed, and were 
to live henceforth in brotherhood with those who 
had succeeded. The grinning joy of vengeance he 
never knew. It had no place in his composition, 
and it was never a temptation to him to gratify a 
disposition that vast numbers of Northerners felt 
and would have indulged in with the zest of Shy- 
locks demanding the last pennyweight of flesh in 
retaliation for the costs and pains of the war which 
had been forced upon the nation. The feeling 
against the Southern leaders, particularly against 
the Confederate president, as the embodiment of the 
spirit of rebellion was savage, and "John Brown's 
Body," whose contagious notes had so long rung 
through the country was now revised, with the 
recommendation that Jeff Davis be hanged "to the 
sour apple tree." Lincoln's influence, in so far as 
it could be exerted in the few days yet remaining 
to him, was clearly and positively against retrib- 
utive punishment. He again resorted to anecdote. 
To General Grant who had asked whether Davis 
should be captured the president said: "About 
that I told him a story of an Irishman who had 
taken the pledge of Father Matthew. He became 
terribly thirsty and applied to a bartender for a 



ASSASSINATION 369 

lemonade. While it was being prepared he wins 
pered to him, 'an' couldn't ye put a Little brand; in 
it all unbeknown to meself.' I told Granl if he 
could let Jeff Davis escape all unbeknown to him 
self to let him go. I didn't want hi in." 

Another time he illustrated his desire for Davis's 
escape by a story of a pet 'coon, which belonged t<> 
a boy in Springfield. The animal was very lion hie- 
some, and the youngster was asked why he did not 
get rid of him. "Hush!" said the boy, "don't 
you see he is gnawing his rope off? I am going to 
let him do it, and then I will go home and tell t la- 
folks that he got away from me." 

The very day of the assassination a report 
reached Washington that Jacob Thompson, the 
Confederate leader, was in Portland, Me., where 
he would embark for Liverpool. Young Charles 
A. Dana, assistant Secretary of War, came to Lin- 
coln to learn the president's wishes in the case. 
" What does Stanton say % " Lincoln asked. " Ar- 
rest him," replied Dana. "Well," the president 
continued in a drawling tone, "I rather guess not. 
When you have a white elephant on your hands and 
he wants to run away you had better let him run." 

The Confederate commissioners in the saloon of 
the steamer at Hampton Eoads told Lincoln that 
they were in no great fear of being hanged while 
he was president, so general even in the South had 
become the appreciation of his personal kindliness 
and clemency. 

What added influence President Lincoln could 






370 ABEAHAM LINCOLN 

have been in the nation's mood, "to temper the 
pride of victory," as the British Minister of For- 
eign Affairs so happily expressed the thought in an 
address in the House of Lords, is a problem that by 
a most deplorable crime was forever relegated to 
the realm of fancy and speculation. For some 
time, with amazing openness, John Wilkes Booth, 
a young actor of wide acquaintance through his 
family connections, his easy manners and graceful 
personal appearance, rather than by any recorded 
achievement of his own upon the stage, consorted 
with a group of evil-minded and hare-brained per- 
sons with a view to abducting or assassinating the 
president and his principal advisers. The plot was 
hatched at taverns and other resorts, and, with any 
suitable detective service, should have been discov- 
ered before the conspirators were able to give effect 
to their terrible resolves. The president's open 
disregard of the ordinary precautions that a chief 
magistrate should observe, and the feeling of secu- 
rity given by the grateful knowledge that the war 
was now at an end, made Booth's way easy. 

The 14th of April was the day Sumter had been 
evacuated four years before, and the same flag and 
the same garrison commander who fought under it 
were the leading figures in an impressive ceremony 
in Charleston. The Federals were in the midst of 
their celebrations in honor of Lee's surrender. It 
was Good Friday, Lincoln and Grant were together 
during the day in Washington, the president's son, 
Kobert, who had been upon the general's staff in 



ASSASSINATION ;;;i 

Virginia, having come to the capital with his chief. 
Incidents of the campaign were recalled, when busi 
ness of an official nature was not being regularly 
transacted, and in the afternoon the presidenl and 
Mrs. Lincoln went out for a drive, during which he 
spoke of the relief he felt at the approach of peace, 
and his intention at the end of his term of office to 
travel, later resuming the practice of the law in 
Springfield. In the evening, at Mrs. Lincoln's de- 
sire, they were to occupy a box at Ford's Theatre 
and witness a performance of "Our American 
Cousin," a comedy of that class which diverted the 
president's sad and dreamy mind. General and 
Mrs. Grant were to have accompanied them, to 
satisfy the public curiosity to see the war's heroes 
at this fortunate hour, but they were compelled to 
leave the city before night, and Mrs. Lincoln in- 
vited instead Miss Harris, the young daughter of 
Senator Harris and her affianced lover, Major 
Eathbone. The announcement reached the public 
during the day, and Booth quickly formulated his 
plans, called upon his lieutenants, assigned them 
their parts in this tragedy of his own making, fired 
by the examples of the stage that flitted through an 
ill-regulated brain, and prepared to avenge tin- 
South, as he pretended to think. No secessionist 
of any position had a hand in this diabolical eon 
spiracy, and only loathing was felt for the perpe- 
trators of the cowardly deed after it was performed. 
It was dictated, however, by partisanship and ranks 
in history as a political crime. 



372 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Booth, by his acquaintance with the stage and 
the people of the stage, found a theatre the best of 
all places for carrying out his insane projects. He 
entered the playhouse without exciting suspicion, 
having previously made a bar for a door to prevent 
interference with his plans, once he had gained 
access to the box, and bored a hole in a partition 
through which to point his weapon, if his nearer 
approach were prevented. A fleet horse stood at 
the stage door without, to carry him away from the 
scene of the crime, that was certain to put an out- 
raged nation in motion at his heels. 

His plans worked perfectly until he turned to 
escape. He placed his pistol at the president's 
head, a shot rang forth, the assassin leaped out of 
the box but caught his spur in the folds of a flag 
with which the railing was draped and broke his 
leg, though the accident did not prevent him from 
brandishing his bloody knife, dripping from the 
arm of Major Bathbone, who had instinctively 
endeavored to seize the man and shouting "sic 
semper tyrannis," the state motto of Virginia, like 
some ghastly apparition disappeared from the 
stage. It was several seconds before any one, 
actor or auditor, could understand what had taken 
place ; a minute or two before it was known that 
the president had been mortally wounded. He was 
removed to a house across the street, unconscious 
from the first, though he lingered from a few 
minutes past ten, when the shot was fired, until 
twenty -two minutes past seven the next morning, 



ASSASSINATION 

surrounded by his wife and son, several friends and 
the surgeons, through whose minds flitted the 
thought that Stanton so forcibly expressed, as the 
heart ceased beating and death wasal hand, l> Now 
he belongs to the ages." 

While this bloody drama was being enacted in 
the theatre, Booth's conspiracy was being worked 
out with horrible results at still another point. 
The lieutenant, to whom he had committed the 
task of assassinating Mr. Seward, had found the 
Secretary of State on his bed still suffering from 
the wounds sustained in the carriage accident 
while Lincoln was at Richmond. The man en- 
tered the bedroom, stabbed the secretary in the 
face and neck so brutally that his life was despaired 
of, wounded Frederick W. Seward, his father's 
assistant in the Department of State, it was thoughl 
mortally also, and left the ravages of his knife upon 
three other inmates of the house who had barred 
his passage, finally, like Booth, disappearing upon 
a horse. The fate of none of the miscreants was 
very long in doubt. Booth himself, the jagged 
bones of his broken leg puncturing his flesh at 
every leap of his steed, finally found a doctor to sel 
the limb, but after eleven days of liberty was sur- 
rounded in a barn in Virginia, which was set on 
fire, and he, visible through the flames, Mas shot in 
the back of the neck by a cavalry sergeant and 
brought forth to die about three hours afterward. 

The nation was shocked in every part by this 
terrible tragedy, the first assassination of a presi- 



374 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dent in the republic's history. The crime created 
unmeasured amazement, which gave place to re- 
sentment and then to an expression of deep love 
and reverence for the great leader who had lived to 
see his work completed, but for whom there were 
tasks still imperatively demanding his wisdom, 
experience, conciliatory spirit and, most of all, his 
unexampled talent in directing and managing the 
people. The corpse was taken to the White House, 
then to the capitol, and finally it was placed upon 
a train to be carried over the route Mr. Lincoln 
had come to be inaugurated four years and two 
months before, through Harrisburg, Philadelphia, 
New York, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, 
Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, being viewed 
by hundreds of thousands of Americans, who sadly 
and gratefully whispered his name, praised him for 
his plain, manly goodness, and recited his public 
services, until it arrived at last on the morning of 
May 3d, in Springfield, where the next day it was 
interred in ground at Oak Ridge, the town's north- 
ern suburb selected for the purpose by his old 
friends and fellow citizens. There, where he would 
be, were his own wishes known, he rests to-day 
under a great monument shortly erected by popular 
subscription. 

What he could have achieved in assuaging the 
bitterness of the next few years by his generosity of 
heart and the power of his personal influence over 
mischievous factions, is a matter of interesting con- 
jecture. If, as some believe, Lincoln would have 



ASSASSINATION 

been less happy in his treatment of the questions n 
was the nation's task to solve from L865* to L870 
his repute as a statesman will be held to have 
gained by his death. This proposition is open to 
serious doubt, and few, who study the period to <l;i\ , 
are ready to accord greater wisdom to Andrew 
Johnson, who took the oath of office a few hours 
after Lincoln's death, and began a tactless admin 
istration, that set party against party in strife thai 
terminated only at the end of the term. As the 
misunderstanding increased between the president 
and Congress, each side became more obstinate and 
unreasoning, and the nation was altogether deprived 
of anything approaching statesman -like guidance at 
a time when its requirements were sore. Faction- 
alism was rampant, and the South' s gaping wounds 
were reopened and salted and resalted by corrupt 
and vengeful men. 

No one can believe that Lincoln in his second 
term would have been else than he had been in his 
first — conservative, calm, considerate, learning as 
he proceeded and in the final judgment wise. Thai 
he would have enfranchised the negro and gone 
with the country to the full length of that mistake 
is reasonably certain, but we know nothing of his 
feeling on this question except as we are informed in 
his private letter of March 13, 1864, to Michael Halm, 
the first free state governor of Louisiana. He raised 
the question " whether some of the colored people 
may not be let in," as voters in that state "Th< y 
would probably help in some trying time to come," 



376 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he observed, "to keep the jewel of liberty within 
the family of freedom." How he eould have re- 
constructed the Southern states and brought them 
back to their former allegiance without Northern 
agents is not easy to comprehend, but he might at 
least have had better fortune in the selection of 
those agents. 

With hatred of slavery and the liberator of the 
negro that he was, Lincoln was not an Abolitionist 
before the war, nor anything but a moderate on the 
negro question while the conflict raged between the 
sections. He issued his edict of freedom as a war 
measure, and on no ethical or sentimental grounds. 
He instinctively treated negroes as men and women 
endowed with all human rights and attributes when 
they appeared at his public receptions or sought 
audience with him anywhere. That the negroes 
mourned his death there is much testimony which 
trenches upon the bounds of romance and does not 
belong to the sober record of history. In the streets 
of Charleston, when the news of the assassination 
reached South Carolina, a correspondent of the New 
York Tribune met an old negress wringing her 
hands and moaning, — u Oh, Lawd ! Oh, Lawd ! 
Massa Sam's dead! Massa Sam's dead! " " Who's 
Massa Sam % " a soldier asked. i ' Uncle Sam' s dead. 
Massa Linkum's dead," she explained, still contin- 
uing her lamentations. However deep, discriminat- 
ing and universal the grief of the negroes may be 
assumed to have been, it must not be forgotten that 
many of the slaves looked forward to freedom and 



ASSASSINATION 

separation from their masters with sincere misgh 

ings. Unused to self-help in the simplest affairs of 
life, they contemplated the change in their condi 
tion with no great satisfaction, and not a few COD 
tinued to live as they had lived, in their former social 
relations except for the mere technical matter of 
ownership. Their grief at his death more fittingly 
expressed the loss they would feel, because of their 
too hasty introduction to all the responsibilit Lee <>i 
citizenship by other men when Lincoln's command 
ing grasp relaxed, than the regret inspired b\ anj 
thing he had positively done in the act of emanci- 
pation. Mr. Halpine's verses voiced the sense of 
appreciation and sorrow r felt by Mr. Lincoln's plain 
people : 

His towering figure, sharp and spare, 
Was with such nervous tension strung, 
As if on each strained sinew swung 
The burden of a people's care. 

His changing face what pen can draw ? 
Pathetic, kindly, droll or stern, 
And with a glance so quick to learn 

The utmost truth of all he saw. 

Pride found no idle space to spawn 

Her fancies in his busy mind. 

His worth, like health or air could find, 
No just appraisal till withdrawn. 

His most fitting epitaph was found in the line 
written by a friend a few weeks after his death,— 
"He bound the nation and unbound the slave." 

THE END 



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Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. (2 volumes.) 

1894. 

O'Reilly, Private Miles. Baked Meats of the Funeral, 
1866. 

Poetical Tributes to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, 
Philadelphia, 1865. 

POLITICAL Debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. 
Douglas in Illinois, 1858, Including Other Speeches, 
1860. 

Raymond, Henry J. History of the Administration of Presi- 
dent Lincoln, 1864. 

Rice, Allen Thorndyke. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln 
by Distinguished Men of His Time, 1886. 



380 BIBLIOGEAPHY 

Russell, William Howard. My Diary North and South, 
1863. 

Sala, George Augustus. My Diary in America in the Midst 
of War. (2 volumes.) 1865. 

Shea, John G. The Lincoln Memorial, 1865. 

Tarbell, Ida M. The Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1900. 

Welles, Gideon. Lincoln and Seward, 1874. 

Whitney, Henry C. Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 1892. 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, propagation of 
their views iu Illinois, 75 ; 
their attacks on Lincoln, 76- 
79, 267 ; Douglas's effort to 
ally Lincoln with the, 118- 
124, 167, 169 ; uncompro- 
mising attitude of the, 264 ; 
change of feeling toward 
the, 291. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Min- 
ister to England, 217, 299. 

Anderson, Major, at Fort 
Sumter, 189, 191, 192. 

Andrew, Governor, 220. 

Antietam, 238. 

Appomattox Court House, 361. 

Armstrong, Jack, Lincoln's 
wrestling match with, 29 ; 
later friendship for, 69. 

Ashmun, George, notifies Lin- 
coln of his nomination for 
president, 154. 

Bakke, Edward D., Lin- 
coln's friendship for, 63, 66 t 
182, 298, 321. 

Baltimore, riot in, 197. 

Bates, Edward, candidate for 
president, 143, 146 ; in Lin- 
coln's cabinet, 162, 188. 

Beauregard, General, at 
Charleston, 192 ; ill-advised 
pronunciamento of, 202. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, Lincoln 
at church of, 135, 137. 

Bell, John, candidate for pres- 
ident, 155. 



Berry, Lincoln's partner in 
the grocery business, 35. 

Bible, Lincoln's familiarity 
with the, 343. 

Bixby, Mrs. Lincoln's lettei 
to, 339. 

Black Hawk War, 30. 

Blair, Francis P., 305. 

Blair, Montgomery, in Lin- 
coln's cabinet, 162, 188. 

Boone, Daniel, 18. 

Booth, John Wilkes, assassin, 
370-374. 

Bragg, General, at Chatta- 
nooga, 254. 

Breckinridge, John C, 155. 

Bright, John, 214, 215. 

Brooks, Noah, 365. 

Brown, John, 83, 264. 

Bryant, William Culleu, 136, 
137. 

Buchanan, James, 97, 102, 
164, 181, 184, 185. 

Bull Run, first battle of, 'J<>;;- 
206 ; second battle of, 236. 

Burnside, General, in com 
mand of the Army of the 
Potomac, 239-241 ; at Fred- 
ricksburg, 242 ; removal of, 
244. 

Butler, B. F., calls slaves con- 
trabands, 265 ; organ i/A-s 
negro regiments, 270 ; atti- 
tude toward Lincoln, 303 ; 
invited to run for vice pres- 
ident in 1864, 310; severity 
of, 323, 325. 



382 



INDEX 



Butterfield, Justin, an "old 
drone," 72. 

Cairnes, J. E., views on 
slavery, 195. 

California, a free state, 82. 

Cameron, Simon, candidate 
for president, 143, 146, 147 ; 
in Lincoln's cabinet, 162, 
188 ; removal of, 231 ; on 
military emancipation, 267 ; 
emissary to Butler, 310. 

Campbell, John A., at Hamp- 
ton Roads conference, 359. 

Carpenter, F. B., observations 
of regarding Lincoln, 320. 

Cartwright, Peter, Lincoln's 
opponent for Congress, 64. 

Cass, General, in Black Hawk 
War, 31 ; Secretary of State, 
164. 

Chancellorsville, battle of, 246. 

Chase, Salmon P., candidate 
for president in 1860, 143, 
146 ; in Lincoln's cabinet, 
162, 188 ; weakness of, 187, 
189 ; radical views of, 268 ; 
opposition to Lincoln in 
1864, 307. 

Chattanooga, battles around, 
254-256. 

Chickamauga, battle of, 254. 

Civil service, Lincoln's views 
on the, 299. 

Civilian appointments, scan- 
dals arising from, 259, 
299. 

Clary's Grove, "Boys " of, 29 

Clay, Cassius M., 121. 

Clay, Henry, Lincoln's admi- 
ration for, 32, 63, 65, 75, 80 ; 
as a compromiser, 81 ; on 
slavery in the District of 
Columbia, 119. 

Cobb, Howell, 164. 



Cold Harbor, battle of, 348. 
Contrabands, 266. 

Dana, Charles A., makes a 
corrupt bargain for Lincoln, 
306 ; his estimate of Lincoln 
as a politician, 317. 

Davis, David, circuit judge, 
59 ; Lincoln's political man- 
ager, 161, 176. 

Davis, Jefferson, 194, 211, 
265, 368, 369. 

Dayton, Wm. L., candidate 
for president, 143, 146, 189. 

Delaware, proposal for abolish- 
ing slavery in, 274 . 

Dicey, Edward, war corre- 
spondent, 180, 209 ; his de- 
scription of Lincoln's per- 
sonal appearance, 318-320. 

District of Columbia, slavery 
in the, 75, 77, 78, 82, 119, 
277. 

Douglas, Stephen A., Lincoln's 
first meeting with, 38 ; elec- 
tion to Congress, 41 ; Mary 
Todd's friendship with, 49 ; 
bargain with the Southern 
leaders, 83 ; first campaign 
against Lincoln, 85-90 ; the 
campaign of 1858 and the 
great debates, 100-129 ; 
lordly air of, 152 ; in the 
campaign of 1860, 158, 160 ; 
devotion to the Union, 194. 

Douglass, Fred., in Illinois, 
112 ; at the White House, 
271. 

Dred Scott decision, 98, 99, 
117, 126. 

Early, General, his raid up 
to the gates of Washington, 
351, 352 ; in the Shenan- 
doah Valley, 353. 



INDKX 



:;.s:; 



Ellsworth, the zouave, 197. 
England, and the Civil War, 

208-225. 
Evarts, William M., in the 

Chicago convention, 146. 
Everett, Edward, 155, 175, 

335. 

Farragut, Admiral, in 
Mobile Bay, 351, 353. 

Ficklin, O. B., seized by Lin- 
coln, 116. 

Field, David Dudley, 136. 

Floyd, J. B. , 164. 

Forquer, George, his attack on 
Lincoln, 67, 291. 

Fort Pillow, 271. 

Fort Sumter, 190-193. 

Fox, Captain, his plan for 
saving Fort Sumter, 190. 

France, recognizes South, 216. 

Fredericksburg, Burnside's 
battle of, 241, 244, 246. 

Freeman, Edward A., views 
of, on secession, 212. 

Fremont, John C, nominated 
for president, 97 ; hero of 
the Abolitionists, 264 ; frees 
slaves in Missouri, 266 ; 
candidate for president in 
1864, 308, 313. 

Fry, General, 335. 

Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 167, 

169, 262, 265. 
Gentry, Mr., his relations with 

the Lincolns, 25, 26. 
Gentryville, Lincolns settle 

near, 20 ; Lincoln revisits, 

63. 
Gettysburg, battle of, 249 ; 

Lincoln's address at, 335. 
Giddings, Joshua R., de- 
nounced as an Abolitionist, 

112. 



Gladstone, Wm. E., views on 
secession, 212 ; recantation. 
216. 

Grant, General, rise <>f, 261 , 
at Vicksburg, 252, 253 ; at 
Chat t a n ooga, 263-2 
mud e lieutenant-general, 
257 ; vigorous methods of, 
26() ; and the presidency in 
1861, 309 ; ending of the 
war, 344-362 ; alleged bru- 
tality of, 350, 356 ; narrow 
escape from assassination, 
371. 

Great Britain, see England. 

Greeley, Horace, sympathy for 
Douglas in 1858, 102 ; at 
Cooper Institute, 136 ; op 
posed to coercion, 1 
urges emancipation, 279 ; 
efforts of, to bring about 
peace, 359. 

Hahn, Michael, Governor, 
Lincoln's letter to, 325. 

Halleck, General, in the west, 
233 ; appointed general-in- 
chief, 235 ; threatened resig- 
nation of, 242. 

Hamlin, Hannibal, candidate 
for vice-president, 153, 157, 
168. 

Hampton Roads conference, 
331, 357, 359, 360. 

Hanks, John, emigrates to 
Illinois, 26 ; fence rails cut 
by, 48, 140 ; in New Orleans 
with Lincoln, 73. 

Hanks, Nancy, Lincoln's 
mother. 19, 21. 

Hardin, John J., Liueoln's 
friend, 63. 

Harrison's Landing, end of 
McClellan's campaign at, 
234, 235. 



384 



INDEX 



Hayti, 275, 277, 289. 

Henry, Patrick, on slavery, 
167. 

Herndon, Wm. H., his life of 
Lincoln, 5 ; law partner of 
Lincoln, 58 ; comments on, 
79, 96. 

Hicks, Governor, services to 
the Union of, 198. 

Hooker, General, mentioned 
to succeed McClellan, 240 ; 
succeeds Burnside, 244 ; re- 
proved by Lincoln, 245 ; at 
Chancellorsville, 246 ; his 
pursuit of Lee to Pennsyl- 
vania, 248 ; makes way for 
Meade, 248 ; at Lookout 
Mountain, 255. 

Hunter, David, General, his 
order emancipating the 
slaves, 268 ; arming slaves, 
269, 270, 277. 

Hunter, R. M.T., at Hampton 
Roads conference, 359. 

Hurl but, S. A., his trip to 
Charleston, 190. 

Hutchinsons, singers, 263. 

Illinois, early condition of, 
27, 42, 80. 

Jackson, u Stonewall, " 
205, 246. 

Jefferson, Thomas, on slavery, 
167. 

Johnson, Andrew, refuses to 
carry out a corrupt bargain, 
307 ; nominated for vice- 
president, 311. 

Johnston, Joseph E., General, 
205, 361. 

Johnston, Sally Bush, mar- 
riage of Thomas Lincoln to, 
21. 

Judd, Norman B., nominates 



Lincoln, 146; accompanies 
the President to Washing- 
ton, 176. 

Kansas, in the "bleeding" 

stage, 94 ; Douglas's revolt 

at the sight in, 102. 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 84, 85. 
Kelley, William D., at the 

Chicago convention, 144 ; 

on McClellan, 229, 237, 240. 
Kerr, Orpheus C, Lincoln's 

enjoyment of writings of, 33. 
Know Nothings, Lincoln's 

opinion of the, 91, 92, 95, 

157. 

Lamon, Ward Hill, 176, 
178, 190, 336. 

Laurens, Henry, on slavery, 
167. 

Lecompton Constitution , 
Douglas's rejection of the, 
102, 112. 

Lee, Robert E. t resignation of, 
from United States army, 
199 ; at Antietam, 238 ; his 
invasion of Pennsylvania, 
247-251 ; driven from Rich- 
mond, 360 ; surrender, 361. 

Liberia, 275, 277. 

Lincoln, Abraham, Sr., settle- 
ment in Virginia and death, 
18. 

Lincoln, Abraham, birth of, 
19 ; boyhood of, 20-24 ; 
death of mother of, 21 ; first 
trip to New Orleans, 25 ; 
early life in Illinois, 25-27 ; 
second trip to New Orleans, 
27, 28 ; in the Black Hawk 
War, 30, 31 ; defeated for 
the Illinois legislature, 32- 
34 ; in the "grocery " busi- 
ness, 35, 36 ; postmaster, 



INDEX 



386 



36 ; surveyor, 36 ; athletic 
powers of, 37 ; studies law, 
38 ; election to legislature, 
38, 39, 43, 44 ; economic 
views of 39. 43 ; friendship 
for Speed, 41, 42 ; candidate 
for speaker 43, 44 ; love 
affairs, 45-57 ; duel with 
Shields, 52-54 ; marriage, 
55 ; children of, 55 ; on the 
circuit, 59, 60 ; advancement 
in the law, 62 ; Presidential 
elector, 62, 63 ; mentioned 
as candidate for governor, 
63 ; elected to Congress, 64 ; 
campaign methods of, 65- 
68; " Honest Abe," 68; 
" Old Abe," 69 ; poverty of, 
69, 70 ; candidate for land 
office, 71, 72 ; declines to go 
to Oregon, 72 ; aversion to 
slavery, 73, 74 ; admiration 
of Clay, 75 ; the Dan Stone 
resolutions, 75 ; on the Mex- 
ican War, 76, 77 ; bill of, 
for abolishing slavery in 
District of Columbia, 77, 78 ; 
political sagacity of, 79, 93 ; 
his campaign in 1854 against 
Douglas, 85-90 ; flees from 
the Abolitionists, 91 ; last 
election to the legislature, 
91 ; first defeat for the sen- 
ate, 92, 93 ; without a party, 
95 ; supported for vice-presi- 
dent in the Republican con- 
vention of 1856, 96 ; the 
great debates of 1858, 100- 
129 ; Ohio speeches, 130- 
133 ; Cooper Institute speech, 
135-137 ; speeches in New 
England, 138; nominated for 
President, 138-153 ; notified 
of the nomination, 154 ; atti- 
tude after nomination, 155- 



157 ; election, 158-160 ; si- 
lence after diction, 161 , 162, 
173; trip to Washington, 175- 
171); inaugurated, L81 1 
cabinet appointments, 1*8, 
189; first call for troops, 
193, 194 ; fears for Washing- 
ton, 200; after the battle o! 
Bull Run, 206 ; call for more 
troops, 206 ; dealings with 
England, 217-225 ; relations 
with McClellan, 226-230, 
235, 237 ; retirement of 
Cameron, 230; disappoint- 
ment at failure of Peninsular 
campaign and call for more 
troops, 234 ; his good opinion 
of Burnside, 240, 241 ; dis- 
tress of, in 1862, 242 ; in the 
battle of Gettysburg, 24ft- 
251 ; joy of, in 1863, 257 ; 
difficulties of, as a com- 
mander, 258; on slavery, 
262; attack on, by Aboli- 
tionists, 264 ; opposes eman- 
cipation, 266-268; on the 
arming of negroes, 270-273 ; 
proposals of, for compensated 
abolishment, 274-281; the 
proclamation of, 278-2^t; ; 
thirteenth amendment, 292- 
294 ; political skill of, 295- 
317 ; religious views of, 
301-303 ; personal character- 
istics of, 318-344; ending 
the war, 344-362 ; his disre- 
gard for his own life, 365- 
367 ; assassiuation of, 371- 
374. 

Lincoln, Robert Todd, 55, 
138. 

Lincoln, Thomas, marriage of, 
18 ; removal to Indiana, 19, 
20; removal to Illinois, 26. 

Logan, Stephen T., Lincoln's 



38(> 



INDEX 



law partner, 57, 58; de- 
feated for Congress, 64. 

Lookout Mountain, battle of, 
255. 

" Long Nine "at Vandalia, 38. 

Longstreet, General, 256. 

Lothian, Marquess of, on 
Northern cruelties, 214. 

Lovejoy, Owen, radical views 
of, 91, 112, 119. 

Lyons, Lord, in the Trent 
Affair, 222; Lincoln's jest at 
the expense of, 334. 

Lytton, Bulwer, views of, on 
secession, 212. 

McClellan, George B., rise 
of star of, 226-229; ob- 
streperousness of, 231- 
232; Peninsular campaign, 
232-234 ; treatment of Pope, 
235-237 ; reinstatement of, 
237 ; at Antietam, 238 ; re- 
moval of, 239 ; end of mili- 
tary career of, 240 ; partisans 
demand his return to com- 
mand, 249; advises Lin- 
coln regarding slavery, 280 ; 
nominated and defeated for 
president, 312-316 ; Lin- 
coln's patience with, 326. 

McClure, A. K., his estimate 
of Lincoln, 317. 

McDowell, General, at Bull 
Run, 203. 

Mackay, Dr., on secession, 212. 

Maryland, attitude of, toward 
secession, 197, 200, 276. 

Mason, George, on slavery, 
167. 

Mason, James Murray, seizure 
of, 219-225. 

Meade, General, commands 
Army of Potomac, 248 ; at 
Gettysburg, 250, 251. 



MerrimaCy sinking of, 233. 

Mexican War, Lincoln's atti- 
tude regarding the, 75, 76, 
109, 116. 

Mill, John Stuart, his sym- 
pathy for the North, 214. 

Missionary Ridge, 256. 

Missouri, proposal for payment 
of slaveholders in, 292. 

Missouri Compromise, repeal 
of the, 83-87, 109, 110. 

Mobile Bay, Farragut in, 351, 
353. 

Napoleon III, sympathy of, 
for South, 216. 

Nasby, Petroleum V., Lin- 
coln's enjoyment of writings 
of, 331, 333. 

Negro, arming of the, 268-273 ; 
reversal of opinion regard- 
ing the, 290; joy of the, in 
Richmond, 362 ; sorrow of 
the, at Lincoln's death, 376. 

Negro, quality, Lincoln's views 
regarding, 118, 122-124. 

Negro suffrage, Lincoln op- 
poses, 123 ; favors, 376. 

Nevada, admission of, 306. 

New Orleans, capture of, 233. 

New Salem, Lincoln in, 28 ; 
arrival of the Talisman in, 
33; Lincoln postmaster in, 
36 ; end of, 41. 

Nicolay, John G., Lincoln's 
secretary, 156. 

Nicolay and Hay, their life of 
Lincoln, 5. 

Offutt, Denton, fits out flat- 
boat for New Orleans, 27 ; 
failure of, 30. 

Opequon, battle of, 353. 

O'Reilly, Private Miles, on 
arming the negro, 272. 



INDEX 



:{,s7 



Oregon, Lincoln offered gov 

ernorship of, 72. 
Owens, Mary, Lincoln's love 

for, 46, 47. 

Palmerston, Lord, his views 
on secession, 212; his part 
in the Trent Affair, 222. 

Panama, 289. 

Petersburg, siege of, 349, 351, 
358. 

Phillips, Wendell, his denun- 
ciation of Lincoln, 76, 264 ; 
Southern hatred of, 265. 

Polk, President, Lincoln's ar- 
raignment of, 76. 

Pomeroy Circular, 307. 

Pope, General, 235. 

Popular sovereignty, Douglas's 
efforts in behalf of, 85, 93, 
94, 118. 

Port Hudson, surrender of, 
253. 

Porter, Fitz-John, court- 
martial of, 236. 

Prince of Wales in United 
States, 208. 

Rathbone, Major, witness 
of Lincoln's assassination, 
371, 372. 

Republican party, foundation 
of in Illinois, 91, 95, 96. 

Reconstruction. 291. 

Richmond, fall' of, 360, 362. 

Rosecrans, General, at Chatta- 
nooga, 253, 255. 

Russell, Lord, his eulogy of 
Lincoln, 16 ; his views of 
secession, 212. 

Russell, William H., in the 
South, 172, 201 ; at the bat- 
tle of Bull Run, 204; on 
slavery in America, 210, 



211; his belief in the suc- 
cess of the South, 213 ; how 
Lincoln received, 334. 

Russia, friendship of, for the 
North, 224. 

Rutledge, Anne, Lincoln's 
love for, 45. 

Rutledge, James, tavern of, 
45. 

Sal a, George Augustus in 
America, 180 ; Southern 
sympathies of, 213; recanta- 
tion of, 216. 

San Jacinto, fate of the, 220. 

Scott, General, opinion of, on 
secession, 187; distrust of, 
199 ; his Anaconda Scheme, 
202 ; at Bull Run, 203, 204 ; 
after Bull Run, 226. 

Seward, Frederick W., wouud- 
ing of, 373. 

Seward, William H., candi- 
date for President in 1860, 
139, 142-144, 146-149; in 
Lincoln's cabinet, 161, 162, 
188, 189; revises Lincoln's 
inaugural address, 182, 184 ; 
weakness of, 187; dealings 
of, with England, 217, 218 ; 
in the Trent Affair, 221- 
224; advice regarding the 
emancipation proclamation, 
283 ; at the Hampton Roads 
conference, 357, 359, 360 ; 
attempted assassination of, 
373. 

Shakespeare, Lincoln's famil- 
iarity with, 342. 

Shenandoah Valley, Sheridan 
in the, 351-353. 

Sheridan, General, Lincoln's 
confidence in, 315; in the 
Shenandoah Valley, 351- 
353. 



388 



INDEX 



Sherman, General, urged to 
send soldiers home to vote, 
314; his march to the sea, 
346, 354, 355 ; captures 
Johnston's army, 361. 

Shields, James, Lincoln's duel 
with, 52-54 ; defeated for 
senator, 90. 

Shiloh, Grant at, 252. 

Slavery, Lincoln's aversion to, 
73-78; its evils, 167, 209- 
211 ; better side of, 171 ; 
steps toward abolition of, 
262 et seq. 

Slide! 1, John, seizure of, 219- 
225. 

Smith, Caleb B., in Lincoln's 
cabinet, 88. 

Smith, Goldwin, visits Lin- 
coln, 333. 

Speed, Joshua F., Lincoln's 
meeting with, 41, 47, 50, 51. 

"Spot Resolutions," 109. 

Spottsylvania, battle of, 347, 
348. 

Stanton, Edwin M., appointed 
Secretary of War, 231 ; goes 
west to meet Grant, 254 ; 
resents Lincoln's interfer- 
ences, 323 ; Lincoln's sup- 
port of, 328 ; dislike of Lin- 
coln's anecdotes, 333. 

Stephens, Alexander H., Lin- 
coln's impressions of, 58 ; at 
Washington, 64 ; mentioned 
for Lincoln's cabinet, 162 ; 
Lincoln's letter to, 174 ; in 
the Hampton Roads confer- 
ence, 359. 

Stedman, E. C, on John 
Brown, 83. 

Stone, Dan., Lincoln's col- 
league in the legislature, 75. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 365. 

Stuart, Major John T., his 



advice to Lincoln, 37 ; Lin- 
coln's law partner, 41, 57. 

Stuart, General, raid of, into 
Pennsylvania, 239. 

Sumner, Charles, 165, 222, 
223. 

"Talisman," arrival of in 
New Salem, 33. 

Taney, Chief Justice, 184. 

Taylor, Zachary, Lincoln's 
support of, 65. 

Thirteenth Amendment, 292, 
294. 

Thomas, General, at Chicka- 
mauga, 254; at Chatta- 
nooga, 255. 

Thompson, Jacob, 164, 369. 

Todd, Mary, Lincoln's love 
for, 47-54. 

Toucey, Secretary, 164. 

Trent Affair, 219-225. 

Trumbull, Lyman, elected sen- 
ator, 93 ; Douglas's attack 
on, 109, 112; Lincoln's 
defense of, 115. 

Tyler, ex-President, 173. 

Underground railroad, 291. 

Vallandigham, Copper- 
head, 225, 229, 313. 

Vandalia, capital of Illinois, 
38. 

Virginia, slave breeding in, 
195 ; invasion of, 201-203. 

Ward, Artemus, Lincoln's 
enjoyment of, writings of, 
331, 333. 

Washburne, E. B., 179. 

Washington, George, 167, 219. 

Washington city, its appear- 
ance in war time, 180, 181 ; 



INDEX 



:*S9 



in danger, 198, 201 ; after 

Bull Run, 204, 205. 
Weed, Thurlow, 139, 148, 149, 

161, 174, 242, 298, 312. 
Welles, Gideon, in Lincoln's 

cabinet, 188; approves of 

seizing of Mason andSlidell, 

221. 
West Indies, slavery in, 208. 
West Virginia, new state of, 

195 
" Wide Awakes," 159. 



Wigfall, Senator, at Fort 

Sumter, 192. 
Wilderness, battles of the, 347. 
Wilkes and the Trent Affair, 

220. 
Wilmot Proviso, 80, 95. 
Wilson, Senator, his dislike 

for Lincoln's anecdotes, 333. 
Winchester, battle of, 353. 

Yancey, William L., 167, 
212, 265. 






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